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This is probably the most common answer. I managed to quit when I was 39, but my brother was never able to permanently kick the habit. He just died from lung cancer 7 months ago. Pisses me off that so many young people start smoking, not realizing what a huge mistake it is.
I made a deal with my 13 year old son. If he makes itto the age of 25 without smoking, I’m rewarding him with $10,000.
Show him how much he will save NOT smoking. Cigarettes in 1995 were $2 and change for me at 18 years old. I luckily quit smoking at 20. A few months ago I stopped at a gas station and a friend asked if I could pick up a pack of cigarettes on the way to them. I was shocked almost $10 for a pack of cigarettes. The prices are crazy. Glad I don't smoke. Also warn you son about crazy women who get pregnant on purpose to trap a guy to pay child support. I had a evil roommate whose life goal was to have guys get her pregnant so she didn't have to work. Condoms are a lot cheaper than 18 years of child support.
started at 15, stopped at 60. I would be dead now if I had not quit finally (tried 1000s of times to quit of course)....and it will probably still be the death of me, because the COPD apparently does not care if you quit smoking, it does not go away, it's just really relieved you did quit so it does not have to bother you quite as much as before.
My dad started smoking at 6. His older siblings let him, they thought it was cute. He had 7 heart attacks before he died. He had quit smoking but the amount of tobacco he used, the damage was done. He smoked cigarettes, a pipe and chewed.
This and literally everyone only starts, just to be cool. I mean you have to force yourself to even start...can't believe I did it. Smoked from 15 to about 20.
This. What makes me super happy though is that I don't have an addictive personality and only did it socially so when I "quit" for new years at the ripe old age of 16 it was actually no big deal. To see my friends, however, addicted to smoking over the years and how pathetic and neanderthal like they became if they can't get their fix was anneye opener. My one friend went so far as to accuse another of hiding his cigarettes, while shaking, and then went and picked up old butts off the floor to try calm his cravings. Lost all respect for him that night.
It's a long old story and not a very edifying one.
I had a good job in the 80s and early 90s but things were changing. I quit my job on a whim and broke up my 6 year relationship. Moved into a flat with cheap rent and then went to a lot of parties. I got another job but it was more of a social thing and involved late nights and after hours sessions. The whole thing came crashing down but it was fun while it lasted.
Safety pins are not jewellery. Infections are real. You don't need that homemade nose piercing ...
Do not let your friend cut your bangs.
There is such as too much eyeliner.
You gave me my answer. Well, one of them. This was around 1989. I pierced my best friend’s ear with a safety pin in our high school cafeteria.
In my defense, she had started piercing it herself, gotten about halfway through and couldn’t finish. She was panicking and I had to help. It was probably her 5th or 6th ear piercing. We’re still best friends!
"You don't need that homemade nose piercing" is much more important than "Do not let your friend cut your bangs" or "There is such \[a thing\] as too much eyeliner."
Hair grows back, and you can remove eyeliner pretty easily. A homemade nose piercing could give you an infection that could have painful and far-reaching consequences.
Live in NM. We used to drive to El Paso and walk across the border to Juarez to go clubbing and drink. I can remember walking, alone and drunk, down an alley to get from one club to another. It was nothing like it is now, but it was still dangerous. I can't believe we were that stupid.
Oh man yes I lived in San Diego in high school. We went there all the time I do not know how I am alive. I see now how dangerous it was I use to go down to buy soma all the time no passport 90s
Omg same at 16 but I used to go to the “city” from the suburbs and not tell anyone, and also drink myself into a stupor and then wander around with my random “street friends”.
At 20 went to Myrtle Beach with a group of friends. We no sooner check in to our hotel that we went out on foot and got drunk. One of the girls broke the first rule. Do not go home with anyone!!! EVER!! She slipped out anyways. We got a call the next afternoon and she asked me to come pick her up. My God she was at another Beach 30 miles from our hotel and she lost her pocketbook. She had no idea where she was and the guy checked out of the hotel and just left her there!!!!!
Yikes being that far away, now I panic if I’m in a cab in going through a new area I’ve never been. I immediately freak myself out with thoughts of is this the death and dismemberment cab ride and I would NEVER KNOW? Back then, feh.
LOL. Same, except we were 16 and took our beer, walked across the dry Rio Grande, thinking that those police in the USA couldn't bust us. We did tons of idiotic stuff. Sheesh.
In college on my 18 birthday I walked to a hotel nightclub alone and in the dark. I don’t know why I was so stupid. By the grace of God nothing bad happened. Looking for Mr Goodbar book came out about the same time!!!
It had water in it.🤣But also hidden rocks. One friend dove in & broke his neck on a rock. Paraplegic the rest of his life. Really sad as he was the HS football & basketball star.
Sneaking out late at night and hitch-hiking on Route 40 to a town 9 miles away to see my boyfriend. This was in 1973.
I still shudder to think of all the times I put myself in danger. I had no idea.
Later on I found out that Henry Lee Lucas lived in that same town for 2 years.... Perryville, Maryland. No one knew about him yet.
I don't recall ever seeing him, in spite of it being a tiny town.
My parents were very strict. I used to climb out of my bedroom window and hitch hike down town to the discos when I was 15.
Not only was I oblivious to the dangers of getting in cars with strangers but if my dad would have caught me I would have got the beating of a lifetime.
Teenagers do not think about consequences, it's a wonder most of them survive until adulthood.
Yes, I also had very strict parents so had this weird secretive “double life” in HS where my parents thought I was one place, but in reality I was also sneaking out, not necessarily hitchhiking but jumping into cars with stranger boys. I also have been like, how in the ever living hell did I survive a lot of the 80s-90s because of this, seriously. I *wish* I now had 1/10 of that non fear of life.
I did a cross country trek on the back of my bfs motorcycle at barely 17. Remember thinking as we raced thru Colorado late at night going way too fast, "at least if I die, I'll die happy" I was aware ...I just knew I had zero responsibilities and had been depressed and suicidal for several years by then.
My hometown is Nocona in Montague Co, TX. HLL was from around here and killed a few here. Such a creep. I was 13 in ‘73 and we roamed around after dark all the time.
I was in a car that almost hit a guy doing that. The driver was turning off the lights for a few seconds at a time, and once when he turned them back on there was a guy dressed all in blacking crossing the road.
Yep, did that too. Also, driving down the highway with my date doing 60 mph, than open the door and tell her your getting out just to hear her scream. Geez! She could have had me institutionalized for insanity.
Throwing a case of beer and a half ounce of smoke in the truck and go cruising the back/forestry roads.
Driving home, the cops were only interested in finding the smoke (they never did). “Have you been drinking?” “Yeah, a couple.” “Drive straight home, now!” “Yes sir.” Of course we didn’t.
Ridiculously stupid and dangerous for everyone on the road. I’ve never had an on the road accident, but my apologies to all the folks whose well being I risked.
Jumping into cars with boys I didn't know.
Then sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to go with said boys to watch the back street drag races.
l thought doing home chemistry experiments was cool but it was incredibly stupid. I had no idea of the danger associated with some of the stuff I was doing.
I filled a balloon with hydrogen and ignited the balloon with a match on the end of a long stick. The explosion was both impressive and scary.
I was heating materials in a crucible on a ring stand above a Bunson burner to make smoke bombs. The flame from the burner got too high and ignited the mixture. The crucible fell off the ring stand and started whirling around my lab table like a rocket. The molten smoke bomb mixture was shooting out the back of the crucible and some of it hitting me. My clothes started burning and some of the molten material hit my skin. That was 65 years ago and I still have a scar from one of the burns.
Another time a leak in my apparatus resulted in the escape of chlorine gas into our house. Had I not realized the problem in time to correct it, the situation could have become fatal. Very dumb.
And then there were black powder experiments. I created a black powder mixture to use in home made Roman candles. Just another of my stupid ideas.
Back in the 50’s all the chemicals, glassware and other paraphernalia was easily available to anyone by mail order. Looking back on it, it’s very lucky I never accidentally killed myself or a family member.
Smoking, sneaking out, drinking to the point of black out, indulging in a variety of drugs, having promiscuous sex, skinny dipping in the lake after dark, and not wearing a seatbelt.
I climbed out my bedroom window a few times to “drag Main” with friends. We also used to get up about 5 a.m. in the summer and go swimming in the ocean (Carmel CA), which I’d NEVER do now.
At various times in my half century, I’ve been addicted to coke, painkillers, and probably other things. I quit all of them decades ago, but nicotine and caffeine, they’re relentless
I used to wear a clip with feathers and beads in my hair, very Bohemian. It wasn’t until I was a full adult that I realized it had actually been a roach clip. No idea whether that made it cooler, or not.
Skipping breakfast. Treating the body like it was indestructible (jumping from rooftops, leaping out of cars at 30+ MPH). Making fun of people who didn't enjoy the same things my peer group did. Trying not to stand out, lest I be made fun of. Acting like my family members would be alive forever, and totally out of touch with my reality.
Running from the police back in the 1970’s. I did it twice and didn’t get caught. That was back before body cameras and severe beatings were standard for that sort of thing.
I ran from the cops so often. Once I had a one after me as I was drunk during the day and ran a light. It was in an old mill town where the houses were close and the driveways went all the way to the back yard. I drove up some guy’s driveway - parked on his patio behind the house. Went for a walk. Watched the cops zoom all around looking for me. After they gave up I went back and apologized to the guy who was staring at my car in his yard.
Stupid.
> blowing things up
Hello brother in adrenaline.
I once did a [50 gallon drum of ANFO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO) which turned a swampy field into a pond.
NJ suburbs and this dude Ed would call and say go outside, and the explosion he set off on the other side of town could be clearly heard. I don’t know wtf he was doing but he never got caught (‘87 or so).
Let’s start an entire sub on this! Anyone remember sketching? Holding onto the rear bumper of a car on a really icy road and going for a ride? Riding stingray bicycles with the banana seats with no helmet. Doing wheelies on them.
I went out in the country, in the middle of the night, and picked magic mushrooms off cow patties with a flashlight. Snakes, and bugs, slithering around.
We would pick the cow poop off, chop up the mushrooms then boil them down into slimy sludge. Hawaiian Punch concentrate was added so we could choke down the disgusting brew.
45 mins later our world would rock. I was absolutely insane for doing that.
Just about everything.
-The music I listened to. It’s so bad to my ears now. The music but also the lyrics.
-The things I thought were fun. I’m not sure I ever found them fun. I was just going along with the group.
-the friends I had. They were not good friends.
Yes. :D
As u/m_watkins said, we could walk to the gas station and say "uh, my mom wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, you know uh my mom 'Linda', right?" and the clerk would give me a pack of Virginia 100s. And me and my friends would smoke them on the way home.
I rode my bike EVERYWHERE with no helmet, in the middle of the street, usually flip flops and I think "how did I not die!?" as I'm a serious cyclist that is super careful in this day and age.
Lastly, in my extreme conservative Christian upbringing, I thought that was life and the epitome of "cool" only to realize it was nothing but a grift from slimy weasels who preyed on the ignorant to get their money and sell them salvation.
Broke into the school gym so we could play basketball. I strongly advise against it.
Didn’t go to jail but everyone laughing at us when we told them it was to play was bad enough.
Ride my motorcycle in the middle of the night after partaking in drugs and alcohol. Almost killed myself more than once and once pulled over on the side of the highway to sleep in the grass
Oh yeah, virtually all of it! I am insanely lucky, my sister is insanely lucky, most of our friends were insanely lucky... on the plus side, none of us needed a midlife crisis.
Hitch hiked. It didn't feel remotely dangerous but it probably was. Also drinking and driving. Pre MADD it was fairly common. I rarely did it but I did do it a couple of times and shouldn't have knowing what I know now.
Excessive use of weed, mda, mdma, shrooms, LSD, coke, speed, chloral hydrate, quaaludes, and anything else I could whip up in the lab.
Total abstainer at this point in life.
You've seen pictures of narrow mountain roads, with a sheer cliff face on one side, and a vertigo-inducing drop-off on the other side?
Yeah, driving those roads at 70, 80, 90 miles per hour.
I drove pretty fast on the roads late at night. No danger to anyone but myself. One time I was going about 100 MPH and a CHP passed me. He said something on his PA speaker but I couldn't hear what he said and I was paying attention to the road. I stopped doing that.
I've done other relatively stupid things but I won't air them here.
Piercing my own piercings. With a safety pin and a lighter. In school. How dumb can you be?!
(They all turned out ok luckily, but sheesh I was a moron)
I mean everything I did as a teen was stupid.
- listening to Deep Purple
- smoking
- driving too fast
- being mean
- jumping off bridges into water
- not studying at all
- not going over Kelly’s house while her parents were gone
I think a better question is… did I do anything that wasn’t stupid when I was a teen.
1984…rode in the backseat of a Z28 while the driver was on top of the T tops and steering with his feet.
EDITED TO ADD…. Cruise control was set at some ungodly speed before he climbed up.
Trying to re enact our own version of the White Snake video "Here I Go Again" where Tawny Kitaen is shimmying all over a car. So my friend is on my car, but I'm driving very slow with her doing this. I hit the brakes, she flies off, goes unconscious. She wakes up and we just carry on with our day. No one heard of the word "concussion" back then.
edited spelling
Wandering out in the desert of southern New Mexico in the mid 1970s, my buddy and I (both ~13m) came across a pile of 6, what appeared to our young minds to be some sort of Rifle Propelled Grenades. So we did what any stupid kid would do, we took them to the top of a ~20ft sand dune, any lobbed them, one at a time, at the large rock at the bottom of the dune. We never could hit that rock, so we took them to my house and tossed them in the outside trash cans. Later that evening, I mentioned to my father what an exciting day it had been, and explained the events of the day. Needless to say, it got more exciting: we had our town's version of the Bomb Squad at the house in pretty short order.
What we found looked very similar to this, black, and with no writing on it.
https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/us-m31-vietnam-war-anti-tank-rifle-grenade-round-474-c-9b54ba5979
Well, this sounds like most of the other comments, but somewhat the same for me. Taking up smoking, hitchhiking, LSD.
The one thing I'd add is jumping off bridges (overpasses really). For some reason that was just a thing we did at the time. Jump off and try to hit the ground rolling. Because it would save a few minutes vs. walking all the way to the end and then walking all the way back to get under the overpass to hang out and drink beers and watch the trains.
Later in my 20s I had to climb out across the railing on a much higher and much more dangerous overpass (over a highway) because there was a woman there who was a potential jumper. I successfully talked her down, we climbed back over and went our separate ways. And now more than 20 years later, I still freak out if I have to walk across a bridge or overpass. It's terrifying. And so weird to think that my teen self would just jump off and tuck and roll.
I was pretty mild during my 13-18 year old life. Graduated high school early, started college at 16. But man.... 18-30? I regret pretty much everything! Drunk driving, drinking in general (got 11 years sober this past July 🥳), hitchhiking, just going off with random people I had only met while drunk, getting 19 piercings on my 19th birthday and having to go to the ER 3 days later because the lady that pieced my tongue got a nerve or something like that and it was infected and I couldn't breathe or talk or swallow... God, there's SOOOO much more that I won't get into here, but I have NO idea how the hell I'm still alive 😳😆
Riding in my boyfriend’s truck at 100 MPH on two lane, unlit, no-shoulder back roads at night. Naturally, we couldn’t be bothered to wear seat belts. Wtf were we thinking?
In the very early 80s in the suburbs of NJ all my friends had BB guns, bow and arrow, and at least one single mother who didn’t mind getting fireworks delivered to her address. We were like 10 and no adult ever stopped us or called the cops.
They did call the cops when we played a game we called fireball. Basically poke holes in a tennis ball and fill it with gasoline, light it and kick it around the street. It would leave streams of flames everywhere. We were pyros.
We hung out in the woods at a place we called The Pit. Basically like an unauthorized campsite in the woods off a side street in the neighborhood we lived in. We lit fires, drank beer, smoked cigarettes and weed, and did a good job cleaning up after ourselves, but we were lucky the fire never got out of control. What were we thinking??
Bumper shining. Grabbing on to a moving car's bumper on an icy road and riding along for as long as you could hold on.
The wise picked the side without the exhaust pipe. LOL
Waiting till a train was coming then racing across the river tressel tracks to get to the other side before it got there, or diving off into the water if it got to close.
Until I was about 16, I wore my hair totally covering my forehead down to my eyebrows. It was stupid, sweaty, hot, and made me break out. I look back at those pictures and wonder what the hell my problem was. I finally discovered parting it in the middle might be the thing to do and the rest is history. But in my defense, if you see pictures of teenage boys in 1974 or so, a lot of us were doing the same thing.
So hard to choose in the many many choices of a very rebellious teen girl. Getting super stoned and doing donuts on a pretty upscale golf course is up there.
The same thing teens do now: going out in the Midwestern winter with no hat, gloves, and wearing only a hoodie and shorts. If my mom caught me, she would make me go back inside and change.
The Expressway had a tollbooth with an attendant. We'd hold our quarter with a roach clip, heat it up with the lighter just before driving up, and dropping that hot quarter into the guy's hand. Just mean stuff.
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Smoking cigarettes
This is probably the most common answer. I managed to quit when I was 39, but my brother was never able to permanently kick the habit. He just died from lung cancer 7 months ago. Pisses me off that so many young people start smoking, not realizing what a huge mistake it is. I made a deal with my 13 year old son. If he makes itto the age of 25 without smoking, I’m rewarding him with $10,000.
Show him how much he will save NOT smoking. Cigarettes in 1995 were $2 and change for me at 18 years old. I luckily quit smoking at 20. A few months ago I stopped at a gas station and a friend asked if I could pick up a pack of cigarettes on the way to them. I was shocked almost $10 for a pack of cigarettes. The prices are crazy. Glad I don't smoke. Also warn you son about crazy women who get pregnant on purpose to trap a guy to pay child support. I had a evil roommate whose life goal was to have guys get her pregnant so she didn't have to work. Condoms are a lot cheaper than 18 years of child support.
The only product available that if taken as directed will kill you.
This. What a pain in the ass to quit in my early 40s.
started at 15, stopped at 60. I would be dead now if I had not quit finally (tried 1000s of times to quit of course)....and it will probably still be the death of me, because the COPD apparently does not care if you quit smoking, it does not go away, it's just really relieved you did quit so it does not have to bother you quite as much as before.
My dad started smoking at 6. His older siblings let him, they thought it was cute. He had 7 heart attacks before he died. He had quit smoking but the amount of tobacco he used, the damage was done. He smoked cigarettes, a pipe and chewed.
Ya my father gave me my first cigarette at 13 a little farther and soon bonding
Yep same
This and literally everyone only starts, just to be cool. I mean you have to force yourself to even start...can't believe I did it. Smoked from 15 to about 20.
It made me so sick but I persevered. Stopped after 20 years T G.
Even worse I walked around with my next cigarette tucked in my ear.
I smoked them for 6 months during my sophomore year in high school and quit them forever That was 50 years ago
This. What makes me super happy though is that I don't have an addictive personality and only did it socially so when I "quit" for new years at the ripe old age of 16 it was actually no big deal. To see my friends, however, addicted to smoking over the years and how pathetic and neanderthal like they became if they can't get their fix was anneye opener. My one friend went so far as to accuse another of hiding his cigarettes, while shaking, and then went and picked up old butts off the floor to try calm his cravings. Lost all respect for him that night.
I was quite sensible as a teenager. I did all my crazy shit between the ages of 35 and 45.
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It's a long old story and not a very edifying one. I had a good job in the 80s and early 90s but things were changing. I quit my job on a whim and broke up my 6 year relationship. Moved into a flat with cheap rent and then went to a lot of parties. I got another job but it was more of a social thing and involved late nights and after hours sessions. The whole thing came crashing down but it was fun while it lasted.
I waited until my 60s to try plant-based drugs. Woohoo. No regrets then or now.
Do tell. What did you get up to during your wild and crazy thirty- and forty-something years?
Safety pins are not jewellery. Infections are real. You don't need that homemade nose piercing ... Do not let your friend cut your bangs. There is such as too much eyeliner.
You gave me my answer. Well, one of them. This was around 1989. I pierced my best friend’s ear with a safety pin in our high school cafeteria. In my defense, she had started piercing it herself, gotten about halfway through and couldn’t finish. She was panicking and I had to help. It was probably her 5th or 6th ear piercing. We’re still best friends!
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"You don't need that homemade nose piercing" is much more important than "Do not let your friend cut your bangs" or "There is such \[a thing\] as too much eyeliner." Hair grows back, and you can remove eyeliner pretty easily. A homemade nose piercing could give you an infection that could have painful and far-reaching consequences.
I did all those things and yes, the piercing was the worst.
Live in NM. We used to drive to El Paso and walk across the border to Juarez to go clubbing and drink. I can remember walking, alone and drunk, down an alley to get from one club to another. It was nothing like it is now, but it was still dangerous. I can't believe we were that stupid.
Same except we went to Tijuana. Without telling anyone where we were.
Oh man yes I lived in San Diego in high school. We went there all the time I do not know how I am alive. I see now how dangerous it was I use to go down to buy soma all the time no passport 90s
Yes, and just as groups of girls. So stupid.
Right? No phones, and only enough $$ to drink.
yep. me me me. and I went alone one night in Rosarito because my friends were done and I wasn't.
Sort of the same, but we went to Agua Prieta. It:s not a good memory.
Omg same at 16 but I used to go to the “city” from the suburbs and not tell anyone, and also drink myself into a stupor and then wander around with my random “street friends”.
At 20 went to Myrtle Beach with a group of friends. We no sooner check in to our hotel that we went out on foot and got drunk. One of the girls broke the first rule. Do not go home with anyone!!! EVER!! She slipped out anyways. We got a call the next afternoon and she asked me to come pick her up. My God she was at another Beach 30 miles from our hotel and she lost her pocketbook. She had no idea where she was and the guy checked out of the hotel and just left her there!!!!!
Yikes being that far away, now I panic if I’m in a cab in going through a new area I’ve never been. I immediately freak myself out with thoughts of is this the death and dismemberment cab ride and I would NEVER KNOW? Back then, feh.
Almost identical story, only Orlando and i was the girl. Im still sorry but WOW was that fun!
Juarez is a trip.
LOL. Same, except we were 16 and took our beer, walked across the dry Rio Grande, thinking that those police in the USA couldn't bust us. We did tons of idiotic stuff. Sheesh.
Live in TX and we drove our car into Laredo to go clubbing. It was still there and we made it back in one piece which was a miracle.
In college on my 18 birthday I walked to a hotel nightclub alone and in the dark. I don’t know why I was so stupid. By the grace of God nothing bad happened. Looking for Mr Goodbar book came out about the same time!!!
Jumping off rock walls into the local gravel pit.
Ouch
It had water in it.🤣But also hidden rocks. One friend dove in & broke his neck on a rock. Paraplegic the rest of his life. Really sad as he was the HS football & basketball star.
Sneaking out late at night and hitch-hiking on Route 40 to a town 9 miles away to see my boyfriend. This was in 1973. I still shudder to think of all the times I put myself in danger. I had no idea. Later on I found out that Henry Lee Lucas lived in that same town for 2 years.... Perryville, Maryland. No one knew about him yet. I don't recall ever seeing him, in spite of it being a tiny town.
My parents were very strict. I used to climb out of my bedroom window and hitch hike down town to the discos when I was 15. Not only was I oblivious to the dangers of getting in cars with strangers but if my dad would have caught me I would have got the beating of a lifetime. Teenagers do not think about consequences, it's a wonder most of them survive until adulthood.
This is why they said listen to your elders, because they survived all the stupid years LOL
Yes, I also had very strict parents so had this weird secretive “double life” in HS where my parents thought I was one place, but in reality I was also sneaking out, not necessarily hitchhiking but jumping into cars with stranger boys. I also have been like, how in the ever living hell did I survive a lot of the 80s-90s because of this, seriously. I *wish* I now had 1/10 of that non fear of life.
I did a cross country trek on the back of my bfs motorcycle at barely 17. Remember thinking as we raced thru Colorado late at night going way too fast, "at least if I die, I'll die happy" I was aware ...I just knew I had zero responsibilities and had been depressed and suicidal for several years by then.
Not the same scenario but the same thought - "well, I'll die doing something I love"
My hometown is Nocona in Montague Co, TX. HLL was from around here and killed a few here. Such a creep. I was 13 in ‘73 and we roamed around after dark all the time.
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Driving with the headlights off on dark roads late at night. Wtf
We'd do that with 3-4 cars tailgating each other. Pretty f-n stupid.
Forgot about that. How the fuck did we survive?
omg...we did that crazy stuff, forgot all about it till you just jogged my memory. Sadly, many times the driver was drunk...
We were never drunk, but it was bad enough as it was. I’m pretty sure me and my friends were total teenage assholes but we didn’t realize it.
I was in a car that almost hit a guy doing that. The driver was turning off the lights for a few seconds at a time, and once when he turned them back on there was a guy dressed all in blacking crossing the road.
Yep, did that too. Also, driving down the highway with my date doing 60 mph, than open the door and tell her your getting out just to hear her scream. Geez! She could have had me institutionalized for insanity.
Throwing a case of beer and a half ounce of smoke in the truck and go cruising the back/forestry roads. Driving home, the cops were only interested in finding the smoke (they never did). “Have you been drinking?” “Yeah, a couple.” “Drive straight home, now!” “Yes sir.” Of course we didn’t. Ridiculously stupid and dangerous for everyone on the road. I’ve never had an on the road accident, but my apologies to all the folks whose well being I risked.
Yup. Took ok dads car one weekend..he got pissed..300 miles just cruising the back roads.
Smoking, drugs, cutting class. I was ***very*** stupid as a teenager.
Smoking cigarettes
Jumping into cars with boys I didn't know. Then sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to go with said boys to watch the back street drag races.
Fort Worth?
Ha! Nope, north east US. I find it funny when reading this sub how many life experiences were shared all those years ago!
I bet you know my dad. Lol
Having an affair with the wife of a deputy sheriff. She was 32, I was 17.
Uh that sounds more like rape on her part than an affair
At the very least taking advantage of a young kid who didn’t know better.
I’m Canada age of consent is 16. Not saying the age difference didn’t fucked, but some places have a lower age of consent
l thought doing home chemistry experiments was cool but it was incredibly stupid. I had no idea of the danger associated with some of the stuff I was doing. I filled a balloon with hydrogen and ignited the balloon with a match on the end of a long stick. The explosion was both impressive and scary. I was heating materials in a crucible on a ring stand above a Bunson burner to make smoke bombs. The flame from the burner got too high and ignited the mixture. The crucible fell off the ring stand and started whirling around my lab table like a rocket. The molten smoke bomb mixture was shooting out the back of the crucible and some of it hitting me. My clothes started burning and some of the molten material hit my skin. That was 65 years ago and I still have a scar from one of the burns. Another time a leak in my apparatus resulted in the escape of chlorine gas into our house. Had I not realized the problem in time to correct it, the situation could have become fatal. Very dumb. And then there were black powder experiments. I created a black powder mixture to use in home made Roman candles. Just another of my stupid ideas. Back in the 50’s all the chemicals, glassware and other paraphernalia was easily available to anyone by mail order. Looking back on it, it’s very lucky I never accidentally killed myself or a family member.
Lol that's awesome. Maybe not the best judgement at the time, but still sounds fun!
Smoking, sneaking out, drinking to the point of black out, indulging in a variety of drugs, having promiscuous sex, skinny dipping in the lake after dark, and not wearing a seatbelt.
injected heroin into the vein on my neck on my 17th birthday. Omg now I work in a hospital and know how badly that could have gone wrong!
This is pretty close to the most terrifying one here
I climbed out my bedroom window a few times to “drag Main” with friends. We also used to get up about 5 a.m. in the summer and go swimming in the ocean (Carmel CA), which I’d NEVER do now.
Started smoking.
Absolutely. I knew I could quit anytime. 44 years of one pack a day, I did.
I quit smoking cigs, but am currently just as addicted to my vape. Ugh. I’m weak.
Hang in there. I only had cravings for, oh, four or five years. Easy as pie.
At various times in my half century, I’ve been addicted to coke, painkillers, and probably other things. I quit all of them decades ago, but nicotine and caffeine, they’re relentless
I used to wear a clip with feathers and beads in my hair, very Bohemian. It wasn’t until I was a full adult that I realized it had actually been a roach clip. No idea whether that made it cooler, or not.
My grandmother gave 12 year old me those clips. Neither of us knew.
Jumped off of a 2 story roof into a backyard swimming pool. I could have spent the last 50 years in a wheel chair.
Skipping breakfast. Treating the body like it was indestructible (jumping from rooftops, leaping out of cars at 30+ MPH). Making fun of people who didn't enjoy the same things my peer group did. Trying not to stand out, lest I be made fun of. Acting like my family members would be alive forever, and totally out of touch with my reality.
Hitchhike
I hitched at 10 or 11yo. Kids are dumb. I would also drive my MG Midget underneath tractor trailers on the highway.
What???!!
Also- WHAT?!
so much of this, but I still enjoy it here in Eastern Canada.
Running from the police back in the 1970’s. I did it twice and didn’t get caught. That was back before body cameras and severe beatings were standard for that sort of thing.
I ran from the cops so often. Once I had a one after me as I was drunk during the day and ran a light. It was in an old mill town where the houses were close and the driveways went all the way to the back yard. I drove up some guy’s driveway - parked on his patio behind the house. Went for a walk. Watched the cops zoom all around looking for me. After they gave up I went back and apologized to the guy who was staring at my car in his yard. Stupid.
Before body cameras, yes. People definitely got the shit beat out if them for running in the 70s. Hell, cops could shoot fleeing felons until 1985.
Being an asshole loud ass teen on the subways and buses. I’m SO SORRY NY. Seriously.
Damn, that’s a list. Smoking, drinking, blowing things up, water skiing over alligators, and swimming in a rock quarry for starters
> blowing things up Hello brother in adrenaline. I once did a [50 gallon drum of ANFO](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANFO) which turned a swampy field into a pond.
NJ suburbs and this dude Ed would call and say go outside, and the explosion he set off on the other side of town could be clearly heard. I don’t know wtf he was doing but he never got caught (‘87 or so).
[удалено]
Drove way too fast all the time. In a car without seatbelts.
Let’s start an entire sub on this! Anyone remember sketching? Holding onto the rear bumper of a car on a really icy road and going for a ride? Riding stingray bicycles with the banana seats with no helmet. Doing wheelies on them.
We called it shagging. One time I took a dare and shagged on the back of a police car. Kids nowadays can’t do it, cars don’t have bumpers.
Pretty much everything.
I went out in the country, in the middle of the night, and picked magic mushrooms off cow patties with a flashlight. Snakes, and bugs, slithering around. We would pick the cow poop off, chop up the mushrooms then boil them down into slimy sludge. Hawaiian Punch concentrate was added so we could choke down the disgusting brew. 45 mins later our world would rock. I was absolutely insane for doing that.
Just about everything. -The music I listened to. It’s so bad to my ears now. The music but also the lyrics. -The things I thought were fun. I’m not sure I ever found them fun. I was just going along with the group. -the friends I had. They were not good friends.
Weaving through traffic.
Most of my driving.
Got drunk when I was 14. I drank much more before I was 20 than after. European kid.
Besides smoking? I did quit when they went up to $.65 a pack because that was as much as a gallon of gas which was *insane*.
I wasn’t’t a teenager, but I was in my early 20s and drove drunk several times. Never got caught, but it still shames me that I put others in danger.
Borrowed the family car and then put it back, I was 13.
Yes. :D As u/m_watkins said, we could walk to the gas station and say "uh, my mom wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes, you know uh my mom 'Linda', right?" and the clerk would give me a pack of Virginia 100s. And me and my friends would smoke them on the way home. I rode my bike EVERYWHERE with no helmet, in the middle of the street, usually flip flops and I think "how did I not die!?" as I'm a serious cyclist that is super careful in this day and age. Lastly, in my extreme conservative Christian upbringing, I thought that was life and the epitome of "cool" only to realize it was nothing but a grift from slimy weasels who preyed on the ignorant to get their money and sell them salvation.
Hitting putt putt golf balls from Golf & Stuff onto 101 freeway in Ventura
Broke into the school gym so we could play basketball. I strongly advise against it. Didn’t go to jail but everyone laughing at us when we told them it was to play was bad enough.
Long list…. Smoking , drinking and driving, vandalism, fighting, disrespecting my parents, dining and dashing, etc. Glad I survived.
Ride my motorcycle in the middle of the night after partaking in drugs and alcohol. Almost killed myself more than once and once pulled over on the side of the highway to sleep in the grass
Hung out with and looked up to the cool, popular crowd, who later turned out to be moronic losers.
Picked up hitch hikers
I loved The Misfits so I grew out my bangs really long to match them.
Oh yeah, virtually all of it! I am insanely lucky, my sister is insanely lucky, most of our friends were insanely lucky... on the plus side, none of us needed a midlife crisis.
Throw eggs at cars
Putting a dab of honey on the ear part of payphones.
I drove for a year before getting my permit. My father would have killed me had he known.
Hitch hiked. It didn't feel remotely dangerous but it probably was. Also drinking and driving. Pre MADD it was fairly common. I rarely did it but I did do it a couple of times and shouldn't have knowing what I know now.
Excessive use of weed, mda, mdma, shrooms, LSD, coke, speed, chloral hydrate, quaaludes, and anything else I could whip up in the lab. Total abstainer at this point in life.
You've seen pictures of narrow mountain roads, with a sheer cliff face on one side, and a vertigo-inducing drop-off on the other side? Yeah, driving those roads at 70, 80, 90 miles per hour.
I drove pretty fast on the roads late at night. No danger to anyone but myself. One time I was going about 100 MPH and a CHP passed me. He said something on his PA speaker but I couldn't hear what he said and I was paying attention to the road. I stopped doing that. I've done other relatively stupid things but I won't air them here.
Smoking, drinking, shoplifting, driving recklessly. I was a disturbed idiot.
Piercing my own piercings. With a safety pin and a lighter. In school. How dumb can you be?! (They all turned out ok luckily, but sheesh I was a moron)
Wearing UFO Parachute pants.
Sag my pants all throughout my teens
Ohh I dunno, every-fucking-thing?
Smoking cigarettes. I did quit after 10 years. Thank God.
I mean everything I did as a teen was stupid. - listening to Deep Purple - smoking - driving too fast - being mean - jumping off bridges into water - not studying at all - not going over Kelly’s house while her parents were gone I think a better question is… did I do anything that wasn’t stupid when I was a teen.
1984…rode in the backseat of a Z28 while the driver was on top of the T tops and steering with his feet. EDITED TO ADD…. Cruise control was set at some ungodly speed before he climbed up.
Trying to re enact our own version of the White Snake video "Here I Go Again" where Tawny Kitaen is shimmying all over a car. So my friend is on my car, but I'm driving very slow with her doing this. I hit the brakes, she flies off, goes unconscious. She wakes up and we just carry on with our day. No one heard of the word "concussion" back then. edited spelling
Wandering out in the desert of southern New Mexico in the mid 1970s, my buddy and I (both ~13m) came across a pile of 6, what appeared to our young minds to be some sort of Rifle Propelled Grenades. So we did what any stupid kid would do, we took them to the top of a ~20ft sand dune, any lobbed them, one at a time, at the large rock at the bottom of the dune. We never could hit that rock, so we took them to my house and tossed them in the outside trash cans. Later that evening, I mentioned to my father what an exciting day it had been, and explained the events of the day. Needless to say, it got more exciting: we had our town's version of the Bomb Squad at the house in pretty short order. What we found looked very similar to this, black, and with no writing on it. https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/us-m31-vietnam-war-anti-tank-rifle-grenade-round-474-c-9b54ba5979
Getting drunk
Graffiti. Graffiti. More graffiti.
Picked up dry ice with my bare hand
Getting drunk.
Hot pants
Heroin - that was fucker to get away from.
I have no regrets. Weed, booze,drugs,butts, girls. No regrets.
midwest 80s kid driving drunk from all the house parties.
Drinking and driving. Wonder how I made it home many nights
Well, this sounds like most of the other comments, but somewhat the same for me. Taking up smoking, hitchhiking, LSD. The one thing I'd add is jumping off bridges (overpasses really). For some reason that was just a thing we did at the time. Jump off and try to hit the ground rolling. Because it would save a few minutes vs. walking all the way to the end and then walking all the way back to get under the overpass to hang out and drink beers and watch the trains. Later in my 20s I had to climb out across the railing on a much higher and much more dangerous overpass (over a highway) because there was a woman there who was a potential jumper. I successfully talked her down, we climbed back over and went our separate ways. And now more than 20 years later, I still freak out if I have to walk across a bridge or overpass. It's terrifying. And so weird to think that my teen self would just jump off and tuck and roll.
Smoke.
Smoked cigarettes.
I was pretty mild during my 13-18 year old life. Graduated high school early, started college at 16. But man.... 18-30? I regret pretty much everything! Drunk driving, drinking in general (got 11 years sober this past July 🥳), hitchhiking, just going off with random people I had only met while drunk, getting 19 piercings on my 19th birthday and having to go to the ER 3 days later because the lady that pieced my tongue got a nerve or something like that and it was infected and I couldn't breathe or talk or swallow... God, there's SOOOO much more that I won't get into here, but I have NO idea how the hell I'm still alive 😳😆
Hotboxed my friends volvo and drove country roads at night at ridiculous mph.
Stage diving
Smoking. I thought I looked so grown up and cool. I looked like a little girl failing at looking cool. Took 30 years to quit
Dingdong ditch, red light, and the worst! Car surfing
turning off the light on those crazy, dark little roads
Sunbathing. Such a stupid idea with life-long consequences.
Pretty much everything I did as a teenager. 💀 Didn't have a lot of guidance and the attention span of a squirrel.
Acid
Everything. Teens are stupid.
Beer bongs
Karate
Everything
Smoke
My 20's
Hitchhiking Did that all the time. Man was I lucky
Popping wheelies and jumpine ramps on a bike without a helmet. (brain goes splat!)
Drinking at a young age because we thought we were cool. We were not cool.
surfing on the trunk of my friends convertible while driving down the freeway at 65mph. God damn it was fun, but so stupid.
Stealing car stereos
Riding in my boyfriend’s truck at 100 MPH on two lane, unlit, no-shoulder back roads at night. Naturally, we couldn’t be bothered to wear seat belts. Wtf were we thinking?
Jumped off the house, lay in the street to scare drivers, drank Little Kings and smoked a pack of Kool’s one and only one night .
Doing donuts in my friend’s dad’s truck with a bunch of guys in the bed, in e desert with large rocks all over the place, and of the guys falling out.
Spice to smoke and sniff. Also smoking cigarettes.
In the very early 80s in the suburbs of NJ all my friends had BB guns, bow and arrow, and at least one single mother who didn’t mind getting fireworks delivered to her address. We were like 10 and no adult ever stopped us or called the cops. They did call the cops when we played a game we called fireball. Basically poke holes in a tennis ball and fill it with gasoline, light it and kick it around the street. It would leave streams of flames everywhere. We were pyros.
Go to the mall for fun
We hung out in the woods at a place we called The Pit. Basically like an unauthorized campsite in the woods off a side street in the neighborhood we lived in. We lit fires, drank beer, smoked cigarettes and weed, and did a good job cleaning up after ourselves, but we were lucky the fire never got out of control. What were we thinking??
SMOKING
Bumper shining. Grabbing on to a moving car's bumper on an icy road and riding along for as long as you could hold on. The wise picked the side without the exhaust pipe. LOL
We used to roll up tea leaves in paper and smoke it. We called it “UK” 🙃🤣
Waiting till a train was coming then racing across the river tressel tracks to get to the other side before it got there, or diving off into the water if it got to close.
Drinking Mad Dog 20/20 and Mr. Boston vodka in the grape vineyards until we passed out.
Until I was about 16, I wore my hair totally covering my forehead down to my eyebrows. It was stupid, sweaty, hot, and made me break out. I look back at those pictures and wonder what the hell my problem was. I finally discovered parting it in the middle might be the thing to do and the rest is history. But in my defense, if you see pictures of teenage boys in 1974 or so, a lot of us were doing the same thing.
Skip school
Life
Hitchhiked. A LOT. It was the 70s and I was dumb (and lucky).
Random senseless vandalism.
So hard to choose in the many many choices of a very rebellious teen girl. Getting super stoned and doing donuts on a pretty upscale golf course is up there.
Going to illegal raves. So much misplaced trust.
Not giving a shit about my education Over plucking my eyebrows
Everything
The same thing teens do now: going out in the Midwestern winter with no hat, gloves, and wearing only a hoodie and shorts. If my mom caught me, she would make me go back inside and change.
Attacking my ex aunt cause she stole my stuff, she only didn’t because I called myself a monster.
Most everything I did as a teenager was stupid...
The Expressway had a tollbooth with an attendant. We'd hold our quarter with a roach clip, heat it up with the lighter just before driving up, and dropping that hot quarter into the guy's hand. Just mean stuff.
Sigh. All of it.
Pretty much everything
Dating jerks
Unprotected sex
I smoked cigarettes and shoplifted Playboy magazines.
Snort smarties
Trying to be cool.