things you did when a child that your parents would have gone spare at. had they known

[hatwoman]

that thread about the things our parents did got me thinking about the things I did.

I used to play on a building site. we used to make dens in these huge mounds of soil and rubble. we'd find bits of ply or wood and make tunnels and roofs .

Play in the totally derelict eaves above the virtually derelict milking shed in the farm next door, daylight seeping through every crack and hole in the floor. rats and mice all over the place

clamber over and play on the rusty abandoned tractors in same farm. not so bad but not great either

harass our neighbours by "spying" on them. sneaking into their overgrown garden and prying through their windows before running away giggling and screaming

[hatwoman]

at living in Yemen as a child. I went there in 98 and fell in love with the place. In my other life I'm a mad eccentric English woman living in al-Muqullah.

[WinkyWinkola]

We lived in the Yemen for a while with my dad and we would run wild a bit as he was working a lot.

My brother (aged 10), his bf and me (aged 8) would run after little trucks on a main road, jump on the end and hang there like monkeys for a little way and then drop off when it came to a traffic light. Yemeni roads aren't the best so we did get lots of road rash. What a stupid idea.

[DoThisDoThat]

I was perfect

HOWEVER, my bf (and she still is after 35 years..) and another girl threatened a little boy with a badminton racket unless he ate some dog shit. He did. Oh God. He had to have tetanus injections and all sorts...

[duchesse]

We used to pinch our neighbours' grapes from their vineyard, and were caught once, also their figs (but I don't think they cared about them).

Stopped off on the cycle ride home from school once for about 1.5 hour unscheduled stop at a friend's house, which time we spent jumping from her father's barn mezzanine into a huge pile of freshly harvested wheat- which her father had forbidden. All got into massive trouble for various reasons.

Made a den on a flat roof inside a barn with straw and things, and brought a real petrol lamp, and matches up there to make it more homely. Good grief were we in trouble (I know these are supposed to be things our parents didn't know about, but they were everywhere and we always got caught)

Nearly set fire to the house once by making a "candle" out of an upturned flowerpot and a piece of cord, and leaving it smouldering during supper next to one of the wooden roof supports of the terrace. Remembered after I'm gone to bed, and crept past open door where scary father was watching football to find flames licking up timber. (it was quite wormy and dry and just good to go up like a pile of sticks...) Never been so scared in my life- it was our only house...

[Wigglesworth]

I used to get dog shit on the end of a stick and either wipe it onto car door handles or throw through open sunroofs. I used to leave notes in peoples empty milk bottles on their doorsteps telling the milk man to cancel their milk. The note thing later progressed into darker territory in that myself and another friend used to write notes to women about their husbands having an affair. We would give details etc and then we posted it through their letter boxes . That is really awful when I think back, I hope we didn't wreck any marriages.

[sazzerbear]

Bunked off to the fair with the babysitter who was meant to be looking after me at home! Makes me go cold thinking about naughty babysitter now I am a parent ha ha!

[MeMySonAndI]

We used to start fires in the empty land between our neighbours houses, bring mice into the house, and for a time me and my friends played to have funerals burying animals we found by the road (!).

We used to go into bulding areas to play with the sand and go into the very deep foundations holes to pretend it was a maze.

Used to sleep on trees (yes... with a pillow and no platform, in branches higher than a house). I also used to climb to the roof using the alley between my house and the neighbour's by placing my hands and feet at the opposite walls.

[Lenlen]

sneak out of afternoon naps for a trip at the river and get spanking when i return home.

[ninedragons]

I was fairly good, but some of my friends were horrors.

A friend who grew up in the country used to play a game with his brothers whereby one of them stood at the washing line with a loaded air rifle, counted to ten while the others scattered, then opened fire on them.

The same brothers used to have competitions to see who could hold onto the electric fence the longest.

Another friend told her parents she and a mate were going on a Thomas Cook tour of the Mediterranean. They hitchiked overland to India.

[loppylou]

We used to play tennis over the house, One of us would go in the garden and the others in the road (cul de sac)and hit the ball over, it was a 3 story house.

Go on adventures in a dried up large resovoir playing stuck in the mud !!

Play with a real bow and arrows

Oh the good old days being 8yrs old

[chipmonkey]

Awen, did it work?

[MamaMaiasaura]

Oh another - i took the condoms from uder dads pillow and stuck pins in them.. i wanted another brother or sister..

[MamaMaiasaura]

lots

Put emery board in socket and turned it on.. blew fuses in the house and there was an almighty bang

Put the starting pistol 'bullets' on garden path and smashed them with sledge hammer.. that was really loud

broke into unoccupid house and played there with kids from our neighbourhood.. the garden was really over grown

Took my older sisters 'pills' when i was about 8-9 (she was 16ish). Didnt know what they were just that they were sweet tasting

Smoking pot in my room and saying the smell was incense.. and she believed me

There is a lot more.. but too naughty and some down right disgraceful to put here

[chipmonkey]

Broke into an empty house with about 10 other kids and used it as a den.
Broke into a derelict place where old caravans and buses were stored, lots of broken glass around. Funny thing was, that place had a sign up saying "Trespassers will be prosecuted." Now, I thought at the time that prosecuted meant you would have your head chopped off, I had the word confused with "executed" but was obviously willing to risk my life to enter this place. There was also a stash of porno mags there which I found very informative!
At 17, told my parents I was staying with a friend but actually went with another friend and our boyfriends to stay in one of the guys' houses, his parents were away!

[sleeplessinstretford]

Jesus-When our catherine was born (she's 3 years younger than me)i took her down the road and left her in a neighbours garden.
When I was 7 me and my cousin took the camp beds and deckchairs out of the shed and built a fire out of them between the shed and the garage and set them on fire,when the fire took hold (of the shed) we decided to go in and act casually whilst reeking of paraffin and having smudges of ash on us-my eyebrows and fringe had singed so i wasn't going to get away with that I got absolutely battered for that.
when i was 8 i was on the garage roof and fell through it,was screaming and supporting my weight with my arms,my mum calmly unlocked the garage and smacked my arse/legs whilst i was still suspended in said garage before helping me down.
In primary school in junior 3 i used to smoke fag dimps from my friends mums ashtray in the toilet at playtime,in junior 4 I used to do the crisp round as i was responsible (i got free crisps and used to steal 10p a day from the takings to give to my friend Martina to bring me sweets in the next day)when i went to secondary school i got really naughty.
took tonnes of drugs,hung round with people who were really really unsuitable and a lot older than us-passed acid around our religion retreat so everyone was totally off their faces-the usual. Slept out in parks/on the meadows so we could stay out tripping and smoking dope when i should have been at my friends houses for sleep overs. Hung out with really wild popstars and all the associated hanger onners got a mention in nme for being a baby faced ligger when i was 16
went to college and got a 40year old millionaire boyfriend who bought me a car-which we parked round the corner from the house and drove round thinking nobody would ever mention that we had a fucking brand new sportscar with a phone in it at age 17 as a'level students...i think i might have been a nightmare you know???
my teen now keeps trying to do stuff and is trying to work out how i am about 40 steps ahead of her...
oh,i also got done for car theft and spent the night before my latin a'level in a police cell only being released at 6am to go home,change and do my exam......jesus...

[madamelapin]

explore german 2nd world war bunkers. They were really scary but also possibly dangerous. We found a bullet one day!

[wobbegong]

Dropped a bouncy ball off the top of a 13 storey block of flats, to watch it bounce to the sixth or seventh floor. Quite impressive really and we used to do it quite a lot. Presumably it would have killed anyone walking underneath stone dead.

Used to regularly take 10p and 50p coins from a local young male stranger, who oddly wanted to give them to a group of ten year old girls to play on arcade machines and things at a fair, while he held our hands and pretended to be our dad. Ah, those were innocent days.

There was also a short spell of daring each other to walk along a ledge of a local sandstone cliff (disused quarry).

[nocluemum]

There was this old lady down the road who used to give us sweets when we knocked at her door. One day she wasnt in so we broke in and stole some anyway - four of us all under age 8!!

[Acinonyx]

Oh the porno mags under a bush in the park! Must have been about 10 - I can remember as though it were yesterday - the gardener invited in to help her with her bath - the torn photo of his hand massaging her chest and all the soap suds... (pretty tame stuff really and just as well).

My friend and I had a spell of trying to write our own similar stories in a similar stories.

[choosyfloosy]

God, hardly anything - i was petrifyingly good. all htese terrify me! must return and read this thread when ds is 13...

once bunked off school, went to London for the day - and went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Regent's Park Theatre [ponce]

probably had a naughty ice cream too

[TheBreastmilksOnMe]

Pushed crayons up my little sisters nose.

Wee'd under her bed and blamed it on her.

Scribbled on the wall and blamed it on her but got caught out with that one cos she couldn't reach as high as I'd scribbled.

Pulled out the dogs whiskers.

Tied earth worms into knots.

Went roaming the fields surrounding our house, alone, when I was 5. Field had horses in it too.

Threw a stone at a girl I hated and gashed her cheek when I was about 4/5 I felt awful afterwards I don't know what possessed me. I still shudder when I think about it now.

Put all manner of insects including those with pinchers into my dads work boots before he went to work one morning. Later he told me he nearly had a crash when something bit him on the toe.

Got me and my sis DRUNK when I was 16 after being left to look after her whilst parents went out and raiding their drinks cabinet. Passed out on floor when they arrived home.

Frequently poured some joke shop 'crap-a-lot sugar' into my step-fathers coffee whenever I had to make him one.

Escaped from my bedroom through the window after my dad had gone to bed to meet up with a man 15 yrs my senior who drove the buses. (Dad also had trip wires and infa-red CCTV in the garden due to general paranoia about the neighbourhood but I knew where they were and where not to tread so I ecscaped al la Catherine Zeta Jones)

I've done lots more but to ashamed to admit! I'm a good girl now. Honestly.

[chosenone]

i remember me and my brother weeing in the corner of our bedroom and blaming it on the cat how weird . I drew a sex booklet! with really bad animation of people having sex! I was about 10 and didn't even know about erections so the whole thing was ridiculous but mum found it under my bed When we were 13 my friend who's parents ran a Youth hostel (it was closed for the weekend and they were away for the DAY) hsd s huge party, it started at 12pm!!?? with loads of older people, well aged 16 or 17 there was so much booze flying round, an hour later everyone was snogging, fumbling, getting lovebites, flashing their boobs/willies out of the window, throwing up crying fighting etc, then everyone ambled home around 5pm for tea!!! Surely my mum must've noticed!!??

[admylin]

When we were still at junior school we found a full packet of cigarettes outsid eschool so we hid them and met after school ( a group of 4 and my younger sister) and we smoked. Then we went to play rolling down the grass bank and I was really sick afterwards.

Also in last couple of years at secondary I wrote my own notes to get off sport (cross country in mid winter)couldn't do my mums signature so I did my grans and told them she was in charge!

[Sazisi]

My mate and I made magic mushroom soup in Home Ec when we were 14, then ate it

At around the same time we used to somehow steal 2 litre flagons of cider from the offy - the poor old lady in there was pretty much blind ...god we were evil, I hope none of my kids are like I was!

[lowrib]

Oh yes, and I told my mum I was going to stay at a friend's and revise on a weekend near to my A-levels when in fact we took a coach to Amsterdam for a long weekend hanging round in coffee shops. (We did do some revision on the boat!)

God teenagers can be devious! Looking back I was hardly ever where I said I was. Of course my son will never do that to me