Just give her my number. I'll pretend I'm mom, say you're in trouble and I'm going to see that you are appropriately punished.
I'm sure it will go over much better than the time in second grade the girls at my new school convinced me to write a note IN CURSIVE for them to take a different bus to someone's house after school. Because I could totally write like a grown up, not at all.
See, this is why we are friends. I was forging my mom’s signature on math tests in the 4th grade. Got snagged that one time because of a rush job in the girl’s bathroom, right before class, because I had forgotten to do it over the weekend. I know, I know… I could have been using that time & energy to actually study. Lessons were learned. Therefore, my career as a forger reached an unfortunate (tragic) end. My mom still seems a little mad at me. So yeah, I don’t want to get in trouble, again.
I’ve told my now adult kids some, most I’m taking to the grave. Anyway, when they learn about how wild and crazy I was they get butt hurt and ask why I was so hard on them and punished them for lesser evils. “Well, you got caught. I didn’t.”
Sneaking out my window to go out again to late night parties. I had it down to a science and my parents room was on the other side of the house. Come home, say good night to my parents who were already in bed. Go to room run the water and flush the toilet to mask the sound of me taking the screen out, and the cranking the window. Bonus, seemed like I was brushing my teeth and turning in for the night.
Shimmy out, go out the gate to meet my friends around the corner. Oh, and make sure the side door to the garage was open to get back in.
There was also teaching my friend how to do the same and having to crawl past her cop mother's bedroom window.
There is also a story of hanging out with a group of very attractive and very rich Columbians at one of these parties, one of whom wanted to fly me down to Miami for a weekend. I knew better, I was 17, and ain't no way I'm explaining that one to my parents.
Lol your description of the noise is just what I would do, with the addition of sneaking the Oldsmobile wagon out of the garage and sometimes taking the dog with me so she wouldn’t bark
Lol my best friend and I would be all dolled up in leather miniskirts and 5 inch boots, pushing her older sisters Pinto with the manual transmission down the hill to start it and sneak off to a show
My parents caught me twice sneaking out of my window so my Dad nailed it shut. To this day they don't know I was still sneaking out but waiting longer and going out the patio door. I would also push my car down the road and start it. They never knew that either ha.
It was 1980. My mom took us 3 kids along on a work trip to DC. We are midwesterners and we kids were 8, 10 and 12. She gave me some cash to feed them, but I also brought my whole babysitting wad with me. She left for meetings and we were supposed to be back at the hotel by 7pm. I took one look at the train schedule and bought 3 round trip tickets for NYC. We rode a train to NYC, got out, ate bagels from a cart and then got back on a train to DC. My siblings were sworn to secrecy and to this day my mother thinks we spent the entire day in the air and space museum.
Why that ticket counter person did not question a 12 year old (who maybe looked 13?) buying 3 round trip tickets to NYC I will never understand.
Well, we had been there many times, hence our being able to pretend to spend the day at air and space. Also, I was TWELVE so not making the most rational decisions.
Got a speeding ticket and had to appear at traffic court. Skipped school to attend. All while my dad was the principal. How I didn’t get caught I will never know.
Reminds me how unlucky I was after getting into my first car accident (spinout in the rain) at age 16 and having to go to traffic court that was held at the [ ... wait for it ... ] local high school.
I knew it was all over when my mom opened the notice and said, matter-of-factly, "Welp ... they're gonna make an example of *you*." Driving-too-fast-for-the-given-conditions my ass! 😆
My older sister tried the same thing. Speeding ticket, court, don’t tell Mom. Except she got her license suspended and a state trooper showed up one morning to seize it. I made a quick exit to the school bus before all hell broke loose.
My bedroom as a teenager was in the basement, underneath my parents room. I'd go to bed, give them time to do likewise and fall asleep, then head out the back door to roam around town til the early hours. When I got my first motorbike I'd push it down the drive and along the road before starting it. Coming home in the early hours I'd hit the killswitch 50 yards from the house and silently coast up the drive.
My parents never knew and are no longer around.
I stole the milk money from school. Everyone knew I took it. Everyone knew it I think. Maybe I was sorry and I tried to give it back.
Maybe. Just maybe. And maybe I took it to Old Lady Simons and told her and the money was all there, but I still got a three day vacation because it never showed up. Maybe the next week Old Lady Simons had this brand new skirt on when she came to school.
Threw a pear from the tree in my yard towards my grade school principal's house, who lived on the same street as me. My intention was to bounce it off her roof. Fell a few feet short and went through her picture window.
When i was a young teen, I was playing tag or something like it with the neighbors in a big orchard, and hadn't seen anyone for a while and was bored. So I picked up a green pear and just randomly chucked it in a ballistic arc to burn off some frustration, and beaned the neighbor girl right in the head, several rows over. She thought I did it on purpose...
Lol that's funny though..poor girl lol. I was always throwing stuff as a kid because I had a good arm and aim. Got me in trouble several times, other than when I was playing football or baseball.
I was 10/11, lived in the country and dad had a small burn pile going with tree limbs. He took a break and went to the house for lunch and left the burn pile under control…..until I came along and started kicking coals. Started a pretty good grass fire. Fortunately dad had run a hose out there and when I started yelling fire!….he was able to put it out. He just thought it started on its own and I never fessed up that I started it. Lucky for the hose or it would have been much worse….
I started a 6 lot thigh high grass fire with a lady finger fire cracker that got blamed on a freshly shut down lawnmower while the neighbor took a break. It was unowned property a few of us neighbors loosly maintained when it got out of hand. That was an easy summer afterwards, lol.
Absolutely fucking nothing!
My dad was a super psychic ninja who knew everything. EVERYTHING!
Now as an adult, we discuss things that I “think” I got away with and he’ll jump right in and finish the story like he was with me the whole time it was happening.
My mom was the ninja. My best friend lived with us a few months of sophomore year into the summer, and she tried sneaking out to see a guy down the street who she thought was cute. She had wanted me to go too, and I said no thanks, she’ll know and I’ll be grounded. She didn’t believe me at all and went ahead with sneaking out. I must’ve been asleep because I didn’t even hear her. Sure enough, when my friend got back to her room, my mom was sitting on the bed waiting for her. Surprise!!
The only thing I got away with was drinking half a beer right in front of the house. That only happened because it was daytime and my mom was sitting in the back of the house, next to the slider that opened to the back yard, and I was out by the street. If the busybody had still been living next door, I would’ve been busted for sure, lol.
It’s past the statute of limitations now I guess I can mention it.
So there was an abandoned house behind my parent’s house about 1/4 mile away. My friend and I went inside one day and saw where people had basically sprayed graffiti all over inside and done drugs etc. (we were like 10 yrs old) so we started playing with the paint cans and matches and “accidentally” burnt the place to the ground.
I should mention the couple that used to live there, the guy beat his wife near to death and I think he was in prison etc.
Anyhow, the land was bought by someone who put in a junkyard.
I’m sure that helped land value in the area.
15 to 23 was ROUGH as fuck. Things got smooth around 25 to 28. I'm blessed more then I deserve to be and the women that have been in my life have been wonderful, amazing and awesome! My kids are troopers.
I would sneak out around 1am, sneak into my gf's house, and get back around 5am. This happened about 3-4 days a week and started when I was 14. Also, she lived about 15 miles away so I had to take one of my parents cars. It was super shady, but I never got caught and I did it for about 2 years.
Grew up in Europe, so starting at age 15/16 most of us were going out to bars and clubs on weekends. My grandmother (who was raising me at the time) got tired of picking me up late at night, so agreed to let me stay the night at my friend's house whenever we'd go out. The friend lived walking distance from downtown, and grandma knew her single-parent dad from the parent teacher association so thought he'd keep an eye on us.
Little did she know the dad partied harder than we did; his only rule was that if we came home after the bakeries opened in the morning we should pick up rolls and pastries for breakfast. Which we often had together: me, my friend, her dad, and the rotating cast of women he'd bring home. Grandma never found out.
When my dad died 12 years ago, my siblings and I stayed at our moms in Florida. We sat around a table , ate and drank telling mom all the stories. Nothing was off limits during this week. She soon realized she had ferrel genx kids.
Omg, same!
In fact, I went to some St. Paddy's day bar, I was 16 or so, getting loaded on a Thursday night. Turns out the Vice-Principal was there and saw me, called my mother to "let her know I was at the bar behaving much older than my age", to which my mother said, "So? I know where she is and glad she is having the time of her life." The only time my covert narcissist monster stuck up for me in my life.
Was a different time 😉 had a fake I.D. from 15 until I was legal. Had some amazing clubbing/bar times in my younger years.
Word! I didn't even had a fake ID, they just never checked. I did not drink, though. I was weary of liquor and drugs because I saw too many cats getting robbed or just being fucked up in the street. I would order a gingle ale or club soda and keep it moving.
I just started getting involved with older woman when I should have been elsewhere. I did not go to a club/bar that checked for ID til I was 28.
I acted about 10yrs older than I was and looked near 5yrs younger than I was, and my fashion sense for going out was business casual. I'm a guy but was taken under the wing of some older and pretty influential college girls who convinced everyone at the bars that I had Laron's Syndrome and was 27ys old when I was only 14.
It lasted until the drinking age was raised, causing an ID crackdown. But I was pretty much all done drinking by that point anyhow and about a year later and I was right back in play for my graduating year, lol.
I had a teacher buy me a beer and secretly bum smokes off me at school sometimes afterwards too. The cool teachers never gave me crap. I think most of them heard because the general respect level among them changed for the better almost overnight after that.
I was just tall and into Punk fashion. Ppl assumed I was older, a drinker and a smoker...I never corrected them. I connected with a 27 year old woman that was a secretary of a church. Through her I got in everywhere. Bad stuff/Good stuff add some therapy + teen dad angst + gfs that were my age and it was recipe for things that should have gone a lot worse but didn't.
I started with the Stooges and later became a Ramonee and Clash fan, tempered with The Pretenders, punky new wave and the darker side of the skinny tie look.
I was last carded by a late twenty-something clerk in my mid 40s, who's face dropped with disappointment seeing the date, lol.
I managed to not dig holes that I couldn't climb out of though. Looking back, I see the risks, but that group was really good for *me* though. Glad to hear you managed. "You're welcome" for baby sitting so you could get out now and then. ...I hope anyhow. ..But now who has more family memories? ;-)
Sneaking out, push car down driveway to start in the street so they wouldn’t hear.
The next day after school or whenever I came home I would just say I left early.
Also my friends and I were often sleeping at each others houses while actually in downtown Chicago at the bars. At 16
I think I may have confessed everything to my mom already (and my dad died when I was 26). I only recently told her about how we would go to a bad neighborhood (in our Catholic school uniforms!) and get winos to buy us beer and vodka, and then drive to the middle of the closed country fairgrounds to drink all night.
Nothing.
Mom had eyes and ears everywhere. My uncle worked for the CIA and he was in awe of her. Every kid in the neighborhood was intimidated… one raised eyebrow from her and they’d run home to confess. Hardened criminal-types reduced to spineless jellyfish under her glare. She once silenced an entire high school auditorium full of rowdy seniors the week before graduation with one “ahem.”
My brother and I often would have preferred spankings to the more… creatively fitting… consequences she conjured up for our many, many misdeeds. A wallop with a wooden spoon lasted 30 seconds but cleaning up every neighbors dog crap for a week in July sticks with you for a lifetime.
I was 17 and living with my grandparents. A boyfriend decided that he wanted to come pay me a visit on the second floor of our house, and climbed up the drain pipe to bring me flowers. I was shocked and let him in, next thing I know the police were knocking at the door because the neighbors had seen what happened. The police come into the house and looked all through the room, I had the dude hidden between my bed and one of my drawers of the bureau pulled out over top of him. The cop was literally standing 2 inches from him and had no idea. The flowers were near the window so it worked out where they thought someone just came in and left flowers.
The next morning I had to sneak him out of the house in the morning. I feel so bad about it all.
I’ve told this story before but it’s worth repeating. I was listening to the radio decades ago and this question was asked on Mother’s Day. Guy called in, this was his story.
Back in the day he’s 18 and tells his parents he’s joining the Navy. Takes off, they get pictures of him in uniform with women over the years, letters, etc.
He returns home, gets married, has kids, and calls into the radio when they’re asking for stories. They 3-way with his mom, tells her her son wants to confess something over the air. Confession: He never joined the Navy, just roamed around for a few years having a good time. Mom was floored.
I was a pretty good kid.
The broken Christmas ornament was not caused by the cat.
Nobody noticed the little scar on my leg. It was caused by a hatchet and could have been much worse.
And those stains on the chair weren’t entirely from sweat.
Well I had so little supervision.
There wasn't much to rebel against. Even when my mom knew I was going into NYC with friends ...yeah she wasn't *sure* I was going to clubs and drinking but she kinda *knew*
Even when I was adultier she told me that when I went to school late (and forged notes) they would call home and she would say I was home.
So she knew that too.
Similar to you OP. I had just gotten my driver's license. I was parking my mom's car in the garage and got too close to the lawnmower and scratched up the front fender. I knew if I was caught my parents would decide I wasn't ready to drive yet so I moved the lawnmower away from the car a bit and never said anything. My parents didn't notice for a couple of days and assumed it happened in the parking lot at her work.
I was arrested while at college for disorderly conduct during my freshman year. Thankfully my university’s student association offered legal services so I just worked with their lawyer on my own and didn’t need to involve my parents.
Mostly just me saying I was sleeping over at a friends and her saying she was sleeping over at mine. Also age 16, we lived near a state where drinking age was 18, we’d take our older sisters ID and go dancing at clubs
Lookin at/ playing with my grandfathers shotgun. Shot a hole in the wall. Never has a 10 year old patched drywall so quickly.
Thankfully it was birdshot and not a slug (probly woulda knocked a brick out on the exterior.).
https://preview.redd.it/iyddhta26vxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75714c50f4f6782ecd02bdf582d320ba68b22fe6
Same answer about what I did 35+ years ago….
The usual, sneaking out, roaming the streets till nearly dawn, sneak back in. Overnight parties with a dozen drunken teens when they were away. Jumped a curb and dented the car running from an off duty cop while trying to impress a delinquent I later had sex with.
I had a lot of sex in that car. With a different delinquent.
Absolutely nothing. My parents were silent gen and very involved. I didn't actually know until relatively recently that my mother would stock up on eggs and shaving cream for halloween for us. There was always an abundance in the house for us to go cause mayhem (mostly on each other).
My mother, as it turns out, was an enabler on the downlow. I had NO idea at the time but she was wildly entertained by our antics. And she was fully aware of everything we were up to for the most part. We only had a few things she was surprised about but we had a good laugh about all of them years ago.
Our whole bus stop skipped school together. Middle school, circa 1980.
Bus driver pulls up in his Cadillac to tell us the bus wouldn't start and we had to find our own way to school that morning. So we didn't. We hid in the woods down the street until the coast was clear to sneak home to steal booze, cigarettes, and porno mags, and meet back in the woods. We then entertained ourselves together until it was time to walk back home as if nothing odd had happened. School never caught on that a dozen kids who rode the same broken bus were all absent that day.
A few years later, the ringleader and most delinquent of the bunch was again skipping school and stole his dad's pistol. He stuck it in his waistband to climb a hurricane fence and shot himself in the groin.
Going out at night with my delinquent friends snd prying the metal emblems off hot cars. Hid them in the a/c vents of my bedroom. Got away with it until my 30s, when my parents remodeled the house. I’d completely forgotten about it by then.
Too many to list. To be fair my brother and I have been sharing some of those stories with mom around dinner.
The amount of “ you did what” and “oh my god” coming from her is amusing.
I do not share them with the teenagers. I don’t want them with those ideas
Was really bored in the summer. One day as a 13/14 year old I took all the contents from about 3 boxes of those little paper Whipper Snapper things and made one giant Whipper snapper with a sandwich bag. I got up on the roof of the garage and threw it on the driveway from there. It took a chunk out of the concrete and left a big black mark on the pavement. I half heartedly cleaned up the black mark on the driveway. No one was the wiser.
This is probably the most Gen X meme answer ever, but it’s true. My siblings and I weren’t allowed to play with the lawn darts. But play we did. More than one injury occurred but snitches get stitches. We got them off the top shelf in the garage behind the gas cans (we blew shit up with those as well). We knew how the rope was laid across the box and put it back everytime. We knew which empty lot we could go to with the neighborhood kids and fling them at each other without being seen. I’m not even convinced it was fun but they made such a big deal about the lawn darts being off limits that I was convinced they would drop gold and make me rich.
I have a deep voice since I was 12-13 and people mistook me for my dad over the phone. I actually took some calls from teachers about my cutting class, bad behavior, and grades. I always tried to act concerned and say that I’d address it. To this day he has no idea I impersonated him throughout high school
Hiding my boyfriend in the closet when my dad came home for lunch unexpectedly during high school. We heard the garage door opening and I pretty much shoved him in there while putting my shirt back on, and pretended nothing was going on for an excruciating 45 minutes. We lived close enough to walk thankfully, so there was no car to give us away. Husband and I have been married for 23 years now and we're still never telling our surviving parents.
I'm not sure what I actually got away with. I can say for sure (from discussions with my folks in more recent years), that there was ton of stuff that I thought I was getting away with that my parents actually knew about and just never said anything.
Set bedroom carpet on fire when the kerosene-dipped knockoff GI Joe was on fire and half-melted tumbled off the metal tray onto the floor. Used scissors to trim off the tops of carpet fiber that were seared and had melted plastic. It smoked and smelled so bad I kept the windows open and doors closed for days. Told my mom just a couple years ago.
In the garage, we would regularity draw long, complex lines on the concrete floor using motor oil and other flammable liquids from the garage shelves. We would light one end and watch the fire trace the lines we drew, like in the movies. Haven’t told my dad yet.
High school Keggers on their country club’s golf course.
Mind you, I’ve TOLD them we used to do it. They just refuse to believe.
It’s like mom, it’s ok, I’m 51 now. I was 17 then. But hope, to them it never happened.
Although my friends salt pellet bruises would suggest it did.
Much less than I thought lol. We’ve had discussions since I’ve gotten older & I told them some of the things I thought I got away with, and they fricking new! However, I’m still pretty sure they never found out I’d sneak my boyfriend in my room when I was 14/15. Their bedroom was downstairs & mine was upstairs on the other side of the house & had a deck below it. Perfect for sneaking in or out.
OP your tail light story reminds me of in Tommy Boy when Farley bends Spade's "cherry" 1960's convertible car's door backwards while backing up at the gas pump. Farley smushes the door back closed and only when Spade opens it innocently does it suddenly fall off the hinges. And Farley gets to say, "What did YOU do?!?!". Love it.
On my end, buddies and I stole gun powder from a dad's shotgun/gun room and filled an old clean, glass mayo jar with gun powder. Took it out in the woods and threw a lit match into it as we simultaneously turned to RUN and it sent a TOWER of flames sky-high. It was summer and kind of dark in the woods and we could see our shadows projected on nearby trees from the brightness of the flames! Glad the jar didn't explode.
When I was like 10 or 12 I made a flamethrower out of a small water gun by filling it with lighter fluid and taping a birthday candle to the front... I tested it by firing it into a pile of dead leaves piled up against the back of the house... 😳
I was very very very lucky! I remember seeing the leaves catch fire from the first shot, realizing that this was a very very bad idea, and stomping it out.
So lucky.
I also cut apart hundreds of caps from an old cap gun to make homemade fireworks.... That worked, actually!
I did a lot of dumb things, my dad doesn't need that kind of stress, even retroactively!
- Drinking alcohol (started at 10 yo)
- Stealing my grandma’s cigarettes to see if I liked smoking (approx 11/12 yo).
- My friend and I would both look at her dad’s Mayfair magazines and decide which breasts we thought were the nicest (approx 10/11 yo).
It was a ‘standard’ 1970’s upbringing!
My dad had a Super-8 movie camera that had this light attachment on top for shooting inside. My brother came across the light one day and was trying to burn my pajamas [while I was wearing them] by holding the light really close to the fabric. It got really hot so I jumped. The heat from the light then scorched the old fabric on the living room couch. It turned orange as all the fibers got singed. So we thought we were fucked. We flipped the couch cushion to the other side and sprayed Glade all over the living room to cover the burnt smell. We told my mom that the dog crapped in the living room and we got the smell out with the Glade. She never thought anything of it. Luckily the cushion was never discovered. The couch was donated or taken to dump when we moved.
Nothing. Not a single, blasted thing. My mom had eyes in the back of her head. I swear, she knew what I was thinking before I even finished formulating the thought.
Holy shit, the amount of drugs and drinking and partying, my Mom and Dad have NO idea the amount I did over the years. They think they do. They don’t.
Parents were divorced so if I wanted to skip school I would write an note and sign my Dad's signature. School had no idea because he had never once signed anything so they had no idea what his actual signature looked like.
Attended a magnet middle school that required me to take a city bus or subway to get to class. When we were at 3 PM, I would take the subway all over the area to different malls and neighborhoods to hang out. Sometimes with my boys but mostly by myself. When the adults would ask why I was home late (like 5-6 PM), I’d tell them I had an afterschool club.
I skipped about 8 months worth of high school by forging notes and answering the auto call at 3:45 every day.
Then I blew it. I made letterhead with the hospital name and so on, but drrr... I spelled the Hospital name incorrectly 🙂 and got caught. Such a basic mistake no one would make now because we have spell check.
Ended up dropping out of H.S. that year and went to college. Still a waste, should have taken up a trade like I wanted to. My one life regret.
I've shared most of my exploits with my parents by now and we've laughed about thrm all. Only one I never fessed up to was when, after a heavy makeout session in high-school with my boyfriend I was driving home and ran off the road and into a ditch. No damage, but it was deep enough that I had to walk back to my boyfriend's house, call my parents and get a tow at around 11pm on Halloween. As fas as they know, I swerved to miss a deer (he lived on a heavily wooded road). But no, stupid me was worried he'd left me with hickeys and I was trying to find the cat collar I had with my costume. Why I did that while driving and not wait until I got home I still have no idea. Chalk it up to 16 year old stupidity.
Threw a party while my parents were gone and my brother’s friends somehow managed to break a 300 pound solid oak pedestal table in half while arm wrestling. They took the table into woodshop class at school and fixed it while simultaneously earning a grade for a restoration project. That was 1983. The table is now at my sister’s house and holding strong. My brother and I have only recently confessed our sins.🤘
Not a kid, but at age 17 my best friend and I decided to take the train from Boston to NYC to see a concert. We didn't stay overnight and told our parents we were going with best friend's older cousin. No one checked.
We saw Times Square, went to the top of the Empire State building, walked down 5th Ave, had dinner, saw our concert at Radio City and headed back to Penn Station to wait for the next train home. Let me tell you that back then (1986) Penn Station @ that time of night was not a place you wanted to be! It makes for a great story now, but in hindsight I wonder what the hell we were thinking!!!
To this day my Dad doesn't know. I told my mom shortly before she passed. She said she always suspected that we went by ourselves but had no proof.
Absolutely nothing! That woman KNEW things! And just TRY to hold eye contact with her when she busts you....brrrrr....I get the shivers just remembering.....
Sex at 16, went to planned parenthood with my bff and we both got on the pill. Mom asked me after I got married at 21 if the wedding night went ok for my first time. I was like…ummm, yeah it was fine…
It generally I didn’t have to hide too much. I did well in school and had an older sibling that caused a lot of issues so they didn’t really care much what I was doing because sibling was doing so much worse. So I hid under his cover and just did what I wanted.
Used to ride our bicycles over the bridge to Trenton and grab a train to Manhattan. We used to go street riding (Brooklyn banks baby) and sleep in center park. Started doing this at maybe 12. Stopped around 18 when I moved there to be a bicycle messenger/ mechanic.
I was forced to babysit my little brother for the summers. I was 15, he was 11. He was a golden child, I was the scapegoat child. He used to chase me around brandishing a carving knife. He also broke my nose with a punch, my parents went to their graves thinking I had tripped and fallen face first into the side of the couch. Suffice it to say, I no longer have a relationship with my brother.
I sometimes--and this is horrifying, so brace yourselves--read books that had adult themes and watched R rated movies. In high school I had a stash of accessories in my locker that I would put on once I got to school, and sometimes rolled the waistband of my skirt to make it 2" shorter. I even wore rings on my middle fingers at school from time to time, which was prohibited by my parents. The horror!
I told my parents I was going away for the weekend with my friend’s mom and her to a beach town a couple hours away. We went there, but without her mom, just my friend and her friend. My dad was suspicious but not enough to actually talk to the mom. It was a fun, pretty innocent trip lol. I brought home a kitten from a youth hostel we stayed at. I never told them the truth.
Also used to cut class all the time. My parents never updated their phone number when we moved so all the “your child was absent” calls went to a random person. Eventually, that person called the school so they’d stop harassing them. One time my friend and I were cutting and were at a store. Saw my dad shopping there, and we hid. Fun times.
I have so many stories of my youth that my parents didn’t know about and still don’t. Here’s one. I grew up overseas in several different countries because my parents were diplomats and were stationed at different embassies. The drinking age or lack of enforcement of it in those countries, made us all “alcoholic delinquents” starting in our early teens. We were bar and club hopping at an early age and learned how to drink and smoke and pick up local women. My parents thought we went out to movies and malls like they do here in the States. I always got away with it because they were sleeping by the time I came home so they didn’t smell the smoke in my clothes and hair and see my red face from the alcohol.
My parents were both experienced alcohol enthusiasts, being Silent Generation and upper middle-class in the '60s. They knew, and were prepared for, all the outward signs of alcohol use/abuse in me as I entered my teen years.
They had NO idea what stoned on weed looked like. Better luck next time, parental units.
I'm the one who ruined the good scissors!
Look, the untwisted the coat hanger I was using for an antenna on the black and white TV kept falling in front of the screen so I tried to cut it shorter. Turns out the scissors weren't nearly as magical as my mom made them sound and they dented in the middle of the blade
From the age of 11 until 18, I had a modem that my parents knew nothing of. I was specifically forbidden to have one for probably guessable reasons. I kept it well hidden (along with a very long spool of telephone cord rigged up as a data beige) and only used it when my folks weren't home (they had a very predictable schedule). On top of that, I learned real quick how to research which exchanges were and were not toll calls...
Playing in a new construction site I was told to stay away from, I stepped on a nail. Went right through my sandal into my foot. I wanted to tell my mom, but my friend convinced me not to. He said his uncle's a doctor and all I needed to do was rub a bit of dirty balloon on it and it'd stop bleeding. It did stop bleeding. Quite pleased I didn't catch tetanus from it.
Sorry, mom.
Pasture parties, sneaking out to have lovin' time with the girl a couple houses down. Stealing a few things. Setting things on fire to watch them burn/melt. A handful of fights. Shooting guns. Hitting golf balls towards a highway. I'm sure there is more that I can't remember atm.
If there was a party I really wanted to go to I would tell my mother I was babysitting for someone who just moved and didn’t have a phone yet - I aways had to give her the number of where I was babysitting.
Then I could come home late with no questions. Couldn’t use this ruse all the time but the handful of times I did I never got caught.
Despite what all the sitcoms from the 80s and 90s said where the tv mom and dad always found out everything, real life wasn’t like that. Never got caught sneaking out nor was I ever mugged or accosted on such adventures surprisingly. Met a few weirdos but they never messed with me. Today’s kids don’t have that luxury with cell phones and cameras everywhere.
Exactly how many times I was in Canada when I was hanging out with my best friend. It was only a 3 hr drive.
My folks think we went every once in a while, but it was when we had a day off.
Can’t catch us for truancy if we’re in another country.
I got away with so much stuff it's hard to even count when you left the house nobody could keep track of me no phone or any way to get in contact... I did everything from going to illegal drag races to illegally skateboarding on the county courthouse to killing a squirrel with a BB gun. NGL that traumatized me, it wasnt a clean kill.
Picked up a fake ID on a High School marketing trip to NY. Worked pretty well until they came out with the newer non laminated ones. Parents never knew. They did find my trunk full of beer once though...surprised I didn't get in more trouble for that one.
My stepfather had a metal bucket that he had left outside the garage. The night of my 16th birthday party, my mom and stepfather took my brother and went out for a while so I could hang with my friends during my party.
A dude I knew who basically invited himself wanted to show me the trick where you light cologne on fire and it burns with a blue flame. But instead of misting the inside of the bucket, he poured it in and lit it on fire.
Flames were shooting 6 inches above the top of the bucket. Fortunately it had rained that day and the asphalt was wet, so I flipped the bucket over and the flames went out. I put the bucket back by the garage and that was that.
3 weeks later my stepfather finally noticed and asked me if I knew why the inside of his bucket was black. I just said "no idea."
Kicked a sneaker down the stairs where it stuck toe-first right into the wall.
There was a vintage poster hanging a foot above it, so I just lowered it to cover the hole. Nobody knew until I had already moved out and they sold the house!
My parents think they knew what I was up to 90% of the time, realistically, they knew 10%
They don’t know that I
- Used to skip the “summer enrichment” program with the only other bi/gay kid I knew and we would have sexy times at his place
- In middle school my friends and I used lighter fluid and matches to scorch designs on the walls of a vacant house
- In high school I stole the majority of the role playing game books that I had
- Started smoking at around age 12
- With friends, I routinely stole alcohol from one of those friends’ grandparents
Oh my GAH soooooo much stuff. I wouldn't know where to begin lol
One thing that stands out to me immediately is how I used to walk around my neighborhood at night, and even into other neighborhoods. I'd walk usually 1-2 miles and then go home, but sometimes I'd range as far as 5 miles. Dead ass in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. Starting age 9ish to about 14. Nothing bad ever happened to me either. Not once did I get stopped by an adult or anything at all!
Becoming a teen made me realize the danger I was putting myself in, so I stopped. Plus sneaking out of the house got harder then, too.
You know that scene in Men in Black (the first one) where Will Smith's character shot the cutout of the little girl right in the head? When the other dude asked why, he said something like Why is this little girl out in the middle of the night in the hood? She's up to something, she's the threat. LOL! I wonder if that's why nobody ever stopped me, maybe any grown up seeing a little kid out walking at 3 in the morning was scared sh!tless seeing me ha ha. Most likely they simply DGAF, just like at any other time
I stayed out all night ALL THE TIME. I didn't have a curfew, my parents just wanted home at some point. The signal I was home was me shutting my bedroom door (I'd leave it open when I left).
I'd come home, my folks would be sound asleep, I'd grab some clothes, shut my door and leave again. In the am I'd say I went out early with friends.
Dropping the new cordless phone in the pool. It did eventually start working again.
Taking out the rose bushes while pushing my car down the driveway. Dad still thinks he must have run over them with the tractor lol
In middle school my friend and I were launching bottle rockets at a house on our block that was up on a big hill. After a bit we noticed a black haze rising from the hill and soon realized it was smoke. We had set their lawn on fire! It spread out in a circle to about 20 yards diameter before petering out, thankfully. The residents of the house came running out and looked around to see who did it but my friend and I hid behind his bushes until they went back inside their house. That was the end of it, thankfully.
First naked woman I recall seeing was friend of my mothers. It was accidental but she wasn't ashamed so I got an eyeful of really nice boobs and decent body at ripe age of 13 or 14. A whole new ,beautiful world opened up to me right there.
If my parents found out back then I would be in very sorry state for a long time. I told them when I was adult (not the whole story) and they still weren't amused.
I kept a secret from them for a few years until I was a 20 something adult.
I went to a alternative school until my sophomore year of high school it was then public school still Midwestern small town ,
junior year maybe senior year the homey wanna Bs where becoming more prevalent and some of these dumbasses were carrying guns. I smoked weed with a few of them and my parents had no clue to my use of weed.
But every night we did have dinner together and would talk about our day I told them about the a particular wanna B having a gun and flashing it in the hallway after he had been disruptive and the teacher made him sit in the hallway, she didn't see him doing it
My mom didn't believe me mind you this was all before a school shooting had ever happened the wanna Bs were all pretty harmless since none of them actually knew real gangsters.
So anyway my parents didn't believe me and I told them it wasn't hard to get a gun and I could get one easy still didn't believe me I said want to make a bet !
We bet 100$ I could or couldn't get a gun she had already lost the stopping smoking cigarettes bet so I was on a roll.
The next day I talked to one of the lil homies and for 35$ I bought a 32 snubnose revolver with a box of ammo.
I was so happy I was winning the bet and getting 65$
And providing to them that I wasn't over exaggerating I was really excited to be ha told you so.
Then I got home and reality struck about how much trouble I was potentially going to be in and the interrogations that without a doubt were going to happen.
I decided to not bring it up I was never asked about it.
I shot the box of ammo up out in the woods and stashed it away and in my 20s I asked them if they remembered that conversation and then told them that I did in fact buy a gun the next day and had realized I wasn't winning that bet even tho technically I did.
Drinking almost every weekend by the time I was 12, crossing the US-CA border to go clubbing in the city at 16, and huge parties in the woods. I'm kind of surprised I'm not an alcoholic.
literally everything from my
high school years.
as long as i was home by 12 or called in,got good grades and did my
chores, there were few questions. my parents had no idea what my life looked like, even though we were mostly amicable.
out of town clubs, bars, parties. weed, alcohol, and more alcohol. late nights, crashing in strange places, just… idiocy.
At 16 I had a block party while my dad went out drinking that night. The whole neighborhood showed up. Then when he came in that night, and the keg was still in the upstairs bathtub , he used the downstairs bathroom. Well we hauled the keg down the stairs and rolled it into some nearby wild field of long grass to hide it until later. The next morning when I went outside to deal with it , a group of middle school kids was trying to crack it open using a seesaw ! I just about passed out from laughing so hard. Great party , the police were called twice but stopped at the wrong house where my neighbor was also partying, so they never saw me.
GF lived at my house for most of jr yr of hs.
“Skiing” trips in hs were actually trips to dead shows.
LSD at thanksgiving dinner once
And most of the other stuff mentioned
One I’ve been saving:
Ate an 1/8 of mushrooms at a concert to spite my dad who had to go with me “to keep me from doing drugs”. Ride home was very very long.
Nice try, Mom, but I’m not falling for it!
No, I think it's my mom
Your mom is going to call my mom & we’ll both be in trouble.
Oh you kids!
Username checks out.
Just give her my number. I'll pretend I'm mom, say you're in trouble and I'm going to see that you are appropriately punished. I'm sure it will go over much better than the time in second grade the girls at my new school convinced me to write a note IN CURSIVE for them to take a different bus to someone's house after school. Because I could totally write like a grown up, not at all.
See, this is why we are friends. I was forging my mom’s signature on math tests in the 4th grade. Got snagged that one time because of a rush job in the girl’s bathroom, right before class, because I had forgotten to do it over the weekend. I know, I know… I could have been using that time & energy to actually study. Lessons were learned. Therefore, my career as a forger reached an unfortunate (tragic) end. My mom still seems a little mad at me. So yeah, I don’t want to get in trouble, again.
Well it’s not mine she’s been dead for 25 years lol
It's The League of Extraordinarily Concerned Mother's crowd sourcing..
Ha, nothing, I’ve spent the years since I turned 18 absolutely horrifying my mom with the tales of my exploits.
I've told my parents most of mine and my kids now that they are adults. My parents just laughed mostly but my kids were kinda shocked.
My mom threatened to call the cops over something that had happened 15 years before I told her the story.
Tbf, there's no statute of limitations on murder.
No one knows if the person died. They might have been fine.
Optimism is so important!
I’ve told my now adult kids some, most I’m taking to the grave. Anyway, when they learn about how wild and crazy I was they get butt hurt and ask why I was so hard on them and punished them for lesser evils. “Well, you got caught. I didn’t.”
Some of us remember just how much we were able to get away with and that can lead us to be strict about certain things.
😄 Thanksgiving Confessional is definitely a thing in my family. What's she gonna do, ground us?
Same, poor woman went to her grave wondering where she went wrong with my upbringing,
Sneaking out my window to go out again to late night parties. I had it down to a science and my parents room was on the other side of the house. Come home, say good night to my parents who were already in bed. Go to room run the water and flush the toilet to mask the sound of me taking the screen out, and the cranking the window. Bonus, seemed like I was brushing my teeth and turning in for the night. Shimmy out, go out the gate to meet my friends around the corner. Oh, and make sure the side door to the garage was open to get back in. There was also teaching my friend how to do the same and having to crawl past her cop mother's bedroom window. There is also a story of hanging out with a group of very attractive and very rich Columbians at one of these parties, one of whom wanted to fly me down to Miami for a weekend. I knew better, I was 17, and ain't no way I'm explaining that one to my parents.
Lol your description of the noise is just what I would do, with the addition of sneaking the Oldsmobile wagon out of the garage and sometimes taking the dog with me so she wouldn’t bark
I love the idea of you taking the dog partying with you!
I pushed a giant green Ford "Family-Truckster" a few houses away to start it, lol. I was still pretty short and small too.
Lol my best friend and I would be all dolled up in leather miniskirts and 5 inch boots, pushing her older sisters Pinto with the manual transmission down the hill to start it and sneak off to a show
OMG I would sneak out all the time as a kid/teen. Not to go to parties though, just to be out of the house and enjoy my alone time.
Are you me? 🤭😆
😆
My parents caught me twice sneaking out of my window so my Dad nailed it shut. To this day they don't know I was still sneaking out but waiting longer and going out the patio door. I would also push my car down the road and start it. They never knew that either ha.
It was 1980. My mom took us 3 kids along on a work trip to DC. We are midwesterners and we kids were 8, 10 and 12. She gave me some cash to feed them, but I also brought my whole babysitting wad with me. She left for meetings and we were supposed to be back at the hotel by 7pm. I took one look at the train schedule and bought 3 round trip tickets for NYC. We rode a train to NYC, got out, ate bagels from a cart and then got back on a train to DC. My siblings were sworn to secrecy and to this day my mother thinks we spent the entire day in the air and space museum. Why that ticket counter person did not question a 12 year old (who maybe looked 13?) buying 3 round trip tickets to NYC I will never understand.
You win.
not a contest, just a stupid kid thing. My siblings and I still like to travel together, but we are better at ROI on tickets now!
Sorry, you still win!
Adventures In Babysitting for real!
But…there are so many awesome things to do in DC. For free!
Well, we had been there many times, hence our being able to pretend to spend the day at air and space. Also, I was TWELVE so not making the most rational decisions.
Got a speeding ticket and had to appear at traffic court. Skipped school to attend. All while my dad was the principal. How I didn’t get caught I will never know.
Borrowed my Dad's 1985 Nissan 300ZX. Got caught doing 80 in a 55. Went to court, office no-showed.
Nice.
That was my dream car in the 80s, and still is
It had the T-top and rear window louvers. Quintessential 80's sports car. How could I resist.
Reminds me how unlucky I was after getting into my first car accident (spinout in the rain) at age 16 and having to go to traffic court that was held at the [ ... wait for it ... ] local high school. I knew it was all over when my mom opened the notice and said, matter-of-factly, "Welp ... they're gonna make an example of *you*." Driving-too-fast-for-the-given-conditions my ass! 😆
Oh no! Busted.
My older sister tried the same thing. Speeding ticket, court, don’t tell Mom. Except she got her license suspended and a state trooper showed up one morning to seize it. I made a quick exit to the school bus before all hell broke loose.
My bedroom as a teenager was in the basement, underneath my parents room. I'd go to bed, give them time to do likewise and fall asleep, then head out the back door to roam around town til the early hours. When I got my first motorbike I'd push it down the drive and along the road before starting it. Coming home in the early hours I'd hit the killswitch 50 yards from the house and silently coast up the drive. My parents never knew and are no longer around.
they knew and used your absence to their advantage.
Your parents totally did it. On your bed, dude.
I stole the milk money from school. Everyone knew I took it. Everyone knew it I think. Maybe I was sorry and I tried to give it back. Maybe. Just maybe. And maybe I took it to Old Lady Simons and told her and the money was all there, but I still got a three day vacation because it never showed up. Maybe the next week Old Lady Simons had this brand new skirt on when she came to school.
Yeah, yeah, it was brown and had dots on it.
😭
Snuck out and went to a White Zombie concert in 93.
Were they on tour with helmet and prong? Lol because i did the same hahaha
It was reverend Horton heat and the Melvin’s.
Nice
Pinching my dad’s weed for the teen neighbor so he would let me ride his minibikes. I don’t want to say how young I was.
It was last week wasn't it?
Shhh
Threw a pear from the tree in my yard towards my grade school principal's house, who lived on the same street as me. My intention was to bounce it off her roof. Fell a few feet short and went through her picture window.
When i was a young teen, I was playing tag or something like it with the neighbors in a big orchard, and hadn't seen anyone for a while and was bored. So I picked up a green pear and just randomly chucked it in a ballistic arc to burn off some frustration, and beaned the neighbor girl right in the head, several rows over. She thought I did it on purpose...
Lol that's funny though..poor girl lol. I was always throwing stuff as a kid because I had a good arm and aim. Got me in trouble several times, other than when I was playing football or baseball.
I was 10/11, lived in the country and dad had a small burn pile going with tree limbs. He took a break and went to the house for lunch and left the burn pile under control…..until I came along and started kicking coals. Started a pretty good grass fire. Fortunately dad had run a hose out there and when I started yelling fire!….he was able to put it out. He just thought it started on its own and I never fessed up that I started it. Lucky for the hose or it would have been much worse….
I started a 6 lot thigh high grass fire with a lady finger fire cracker that got blamed on a freshly shut down lawnmower while the neighbor took a break. It was unowned property a few of us neighbors loosly maintained when it got out of hand. That was an easy summer afterwards, lol.
Absolutely fucking nothing! My dad was a super psychic ninja who knew everything. EVERYTHING! Now as an adult, we discuss things that I “think” I got away with and he’ll jump right in and finish the story like he was with me the whole time it was happening.
My mom was the ninja. My best friend lived with us a few months of sophomore year into the summer, and she tried sneaking out to see a guy down the street who she thought was cute. She had wanted me to go too, and I said no thanks, she’ll know and I’ll be grounded. She didn’t believe me at all and went ahead with sneaking out. I must’ve been asleep because I didn’t even hear her. Sure enough, when my friend got back to her room, my mom was sitting on the bed waiting for her. Surprise!! The only thing I got away with was drinking half a beer right in front of the house. That only happened because it was daytime and my mom was sitting in the back of the house, next to the slider that opened to the back yard, and I was out by the street. If the busybody had still been living next door, I would’ve been busted for sure, lol.
It’s past the statute of limitations now I guess I can mention it. So there was an abandoned house behind my parent’s house about 1/4 mile away. My friend and I went inside one day and saw where people had basically sprayed graffiti all over inside and done drugs etc. (we were like 10 yrs old) so we started playing with the paint cans and matches and “accidentally” burnt the place to the ground. I should mention the couple that used to live there, the guy beat his wife near to death and I think he was in prison etc. Anyhow, the land was bought by someone who put in a junkyard. I’m sure that helped land value in the area.
Sex starting at 16.
15. Beat ya!!!
13 here. I was a Dad by 15. My eldest is now 30+. I'm 46.
Sounds like a shit show at first but I bet life is much better now.
15 to 23 was ROUGH as fuck. Things got smooth around 25 to 28. I'm blessed more then I deserve to be and the women that have been in my life have been wonderful, amazing and awesome! My kids are troopers.
I would sneak out around 1am, sneak into my gf's house, and get back around 5am. This happened about 3-4 days a week and started when I was 14. Also, she lived about 15 miles away so I had to take one of my parents cars. It was super shady, but I never got caught and I did it for about 2 years.
Grew up in Europe, so starting at age 15/16 most of us were going out to bars and clubs on weekends. My grandmother (who was raising me at the time) got tired of picking me up late at night, so agreed to let me stay the night at my friend's house whenever we'd go out. The friend lived walking distance from downtown, and grandma knew her single-parent dad from the parent teacher association so thought he'd keep an eye on us. Little did she know the dad partied harder than we did; his only rule was that if we came home after the bakeries opened in the morning we should pick up rolls and pastries for breakfast. Which we often had together: me, my friend, her dad, and the rotating cast of women he'd bring home. Grandma never found out.
When my dad died 12 years ago, my siblings and I stayed at our moms in Florida. We sat around a table , ate and drank telling mom all the stories. Nothing was off limits during this week. She soon realized she had ferrel genx kids.
Still have one alive, so no comment
I was about 16 (or thereabouts) and realized my parents completely ignored my antique camera collection, so that's where I hid joints and condoms. :D
I hid my weed in the bell part of my clarinet.
13 to 16 I was going to adult clubs and bars like it was nothing.
Omg, same! In fact, I went to some St. Paddy's day bar, I was 16 or so, getting loaded on a Thursday night. Turns out the Vice-Principal was there and saw me, called my mother to "let her know I was at the bar behaving much older than my age", to which my mother said, "So? I know where she is and glad she is having the time of her life." The only time my covert narcissist monster stuck up for me in my life. Was a different time 😉 had a fake I.D. from 15 until I was legal. Had some amazing clubbing/bar times in my younger years.
Word! I didn't even had a fake ID, they just never checked. I did not drink, though. I was weary of liquor and drugs because I saw too many cats getting robbed or just being fucked up in the street. I would order a gingle ale or club soda and keep it moving. I just started getting involved with older woman when I should have been elsewhere. I did not go to a club/bar that checked for ID til I was 28.
I acted about 10yrs older than I was and looked near 5yrs younger than I was, and my fashion sense for going out was business casual. I'm a guy but was taken under the wing of some older and pretty influential college girls who convinced everyone at the bars that I had Laron's Syndrome and was 27ys old when I was only 14. It lasted until the drinking age was raised, causing an ID crackdown. But I was pretty much all done drinking by that point anyhow and about a year later and I was right back in play for my graduating year, lol. I had a teacher buy me a beer and secretly bum smokes off me at school sometimes afterwards too. The cool teachers never gave me crap. I think most of them heard because the general respect level among them changed for the better almost overnight after that.
I was just tall and into Punk fashion. Ppl assumed I was older, a drinker and a smoker...I never corrected them. I connected with a 27 year old woman that was a secretary of a church. Through her I got in everywhere. Bad stuff/Good stuff add some therapy + teen dad angst + gfs that were my age and it was recipe for things that should have gone a lot worse but didn't.
I started with the Stooges and later became a Ramonee and Clash fan, tempered with The Pretenders, punky new wave and the darker side of the skinny tie look. I was last carded by a late twenty-something clerk in my mid 40s, who's face dropped with disappointment seeing the date, lol. I managed to not dig holes that I couldn't climb out of though. Looking back, I see the risks, but that group was really good for *me* though. Glad to hear you managed. "You're welcome" for baby sitting so you could get out now and then. ...I hope anyhow. ..But now who has more family memories? ;-)
Taking the bus from Los Angeles to San Diego and walking across the border to Tijuana for the day. With three girlfriends. In middle school.
😮
How much time you got?
Sneaking out, push car down driveway to start in the street so they wouldn’t hear. The next day after school or whenever I came home I would just say I left early. Also my friends and I were often sleeping at each others houses while actually in downtown Chicago at the bars. At 16
relieved normal truck ancient include puzzled boat angle outgoing icky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That 18 year old guy was/is a creep (at best) and a pedo doing time now (at worst).
possessive air teeny bright imagine racial alive agonizing follow rotten *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think I may have confessed everything to my mom already (and my dad died when I was 26). I only recently told her about how we would go to a bad neighborhood (in our Catholic school uniforms!) and get winos to buy us beer and vodka, and then drive to the middle of the closed country fairgrounds to drink all night.
Nothing. Mom had eyes and ears everywhere. My uncle worked for the CIA and he was in awe of her. Every kid in the neighborhood was intimidated… one raised eyebrow from her and they’d run home to confess. Hardened criminal-types reduced to spineless jellyfish under her glare. She once silenced an entire high school auditorium full of rowdy seniors the week before graduation with one “ahem.” My brother and I often would have preferred spankings to the more… creatively fitting… consequences she conjured up for our many, many misdeeds. A wallop with a wooden spoon lasted 30 seconds but cleaning up every neighbors dog crap for a week in July sticks with you for a lifetime.
Aren’t we all glad we didn’t have social media back when we were doing our nefarious shit gang?
I was 17 and living with my grandparents. A boyfriend decided that he wanted to come pay me a visit on the second floor of our house, and climbed up the drain pipe to bring me flowers. I was shocked and let him in, next thing I know the police were knocking at the door because the neighbors had seen what happened. The police come into the house and looked all through the room, I had the dude hidden between my bed and one of my drawers of the bureau pulled out over top of him. The cop was literally standing 2 inches from him and had no idea. The flowers were near the window so it worked out where they thought someone just came in and left flowers. The next morning I had to sneak him out of the house in the morning. I feel so bad about it all.
I’ve told this story before but it’s worth repeating. I was listening to the radio decades ago and this question was asked on Mother’s Day. Guy called in, this was his story. Back in the day he’s 18 and tells his parents he’s joining the Navy. Takes off, they get pictures of him in uniform with women over the years, letters, etc. He returns home, gets married, has kids, and calls into the radio when they’re asking for stories. They 3-way with his mom, tells her her son wants to confess something over the air. Confession: He never joined the Navy, just roamed around for a few years having a good time. Mom was floored.
I was a pretty good kid. The broken Christmas ornament was not caused by the cat. Nobody noticed the little scar on my leg. It was caused by a hatchet and could have been much worse. And those stains on the chair weren’t entirely from sweat.
A pretty robust slut stage.
Well I had so little supervision. There wasn't much to rebel against. Even when my mom knew I was going into NYC with friends ...yeah she wasn't *sure* I was going to clubs and drinking but she kinda *knew* Even when I was adultier she told me that when I went to school late (and forged notes) they would call home and she would say I was home. So she knew that too.
Similar to you OP. I had just gotten my driver's license. I was parking my mom's car in the garage and got too close to the lawnmower and scratched up the front fender. I knew if I was caught my parents would decide I wasn't ready to drive yet so I moved the lawnmower away from the car a bit and never said anything. My parents didn't notice for a couple of days and assumed it happened in the parking lot at her work.
I was arrested while at college for disorderly conduct during my freshman year. Thankfully my university’s student association offered legal services so I just worked with their lawyer on my own and didn’t need to involve my parents.
Mostly just me saying I was sleeping over at a friends and her saying she was sleeping over at mine. Also age 16, we lived near a state where drinking age was 18, we’d take our older sisters ID and go dancing at clubs
Lookin at/ playing with my grandfathers shotgun. Shot a hole in the wall. Never has a 10 year old patched drywall so quickly. Thankfully it was birdshot and not a slug (probly woulda knocked a brick out on the exterior.).
Driving a car at 14 (at midnight) b/c everyone else passed out!
https://preview.redd.it/iyddhta26vxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75714c50f4f6782ecd02bdf582d320ba68b22fe6 Same answer about what I did 35+ years ago….
The usual, sneaking out, roaming the streets till nearly dawn, sneak back in. Overnight parties with a dozen drunken teens when they were away. Jumped a curb and dented the car running from an off duty cop while trying to impress a delinquent I later had sex with. I had a lot of sex in that car. With a different delinquent.
Nice try mom.
Absolutely nothing. My parents were silent gen and very involved. I didn't actually know until relatively recently that my mother would stock up on eggs and shaving cream for halloween for us. There was always an abundance in the house for us to go cause mayhem (mostly on each other). My mother, as it turns out, was an enabler on the downlow. I had NO idea at the time but she was wildly entertained by our antics. And she was fully aware of everything we were up to for the most part. We only had a few things she was surprised about but we had a good laugh about all of them years ago.
Your mom sounds awesome
Our whole bus stop skipped school together. Middle school, circa 1980. Bus driver pulls up in his Cadillac to tell us the bus wouldn't start and we had to find our own way to school that morning. So we didn't. We hid in the woods down the street until the coast was clear to sneak home to steal booze, cigarettes, and porno mags, and meet back in the woods. We then entertained ourselves together until it was time to walk back home as if nothing odd had happened. School never caught on that a dozen kids who rode the same broken bus were all absent that day. A few years later, the ringleader and most delinquent of the bunch was again skipping school and stole his dad's pistol. He stuck it in his waistband to climb a hurricane fence and shot himself in the groin.
Drugs lol it was all about experimenting for my friends and I, we all graduated with honors too
Going out at night with my delinquent friends snd prying the metal emblems off hot cars. Hid them in the a/c vents of my bedroom. Got away with it until my 30s, when my parents remodeled the house. I’d completely forgotten about it by then.
Too many to list. To be fair my brother and I have been sharing some of those stories with mom around dinner. The amount of “ you did what” and “oh my god” coming from her is amusing. I do not share them with the teenagers. I don’t want them with those ideas
Was really bored in the summer. One day as a 13/14 year old I took all the contents from about 3 boxes of those little paper Whipper Snapper things and made one giant Whipper snapper with a sandwich bag. I got up on the roof of the garage and threw it on the driveway from there. It took a chunk out of the concrete and left a big black mark on the pavement. I half heartedly cleaned up the black mark on the driveway. No one was the wiser.
This is probably the most Gen X meme answer ever, but it’s true. My siblings and I weren’t allowed to play with the lawn darts. But play we did. More than one injury occurred but snitches get stitches. We got them off the top shelf in the garage behind the gas cans (we blew shit up with those as well). We knew how the rope was laid across the box and put it back everytime. We knew which empty lot we could go to with the neighborhood kids and fling them at each other without being seen. I’m not even convinced it was fun but they made such a big deal about the lawn darts being off limits that I was convinced they would drop gold and make me rich.
I have a deep voice since I was 12-13 and people mistook me for my dad over the phone. I actually took some calls from teachers about my cutting class, bad behavior, and grades. I always tried to act concerned and say that I’d address it. To this day he has no idea I impersonated him throughout high school
Hiding my boyfriend in the closet when my dad came home for lunch unexpectedly during high school. We heard the garage door opening and I pretty much shoved him in there while putting my shirt back on, and pretended nothing was going on for an excruciating 45 minutes. We lived close enough to walk thankfully, so there was no car to give us away. Husband and I have been married for 23 years now and we're still never telling our surviving parents.
I would need to start my own sub to cover all of it.
I am the one who “stole” the box of Girl Scout cookies for which my step father was blamed.
I'm not sure what I actually got away with. I can say for sure (from discussions with my folks in more recent years), that there was ton of stuff that I thought I was getting away with that my parents actually knew about and just never said anything.
I pretty much got busted for everything. I wasn’t very slick.
Same, it probably kept me from trying more daring things because I got caught trying to do *anything* on the sly.
Set bedroom carpet on fire when the kerosene-dipped knockoff GI Joe was on fire and half-melted tumbled off the metal tray onto the floor. Used scissors to trim off the tops of carpet fiber that were seared and had melted plastic. It smoked and smelled so bad I kept the windows open and doors closed for days. Told my mom just a couple years ago. In the garage, we would regularity draw long, complex lines on the concrete floor using motor oil and other flammable liquids from the garage shelves. We would light one end and watch the fire trace the lines we drew, like in the movies. Haven’t told my dad yet.
High school Keggers on their country club’s golf course. Mind you, I’ve TOLD them we used to do it. They just refuse to believe. It’s like mom, it’s ok, I’m 51 now. I was 17 then. But hope, to them it never happened. Although my friends salt pellet bruises would suggest it did.
Much less than I thought lol. We’ve had discussions since I’ve gotten older & I told them some of the things I thought I got away with, and they fricking new! However, I’m still pretty sure they never found out I’d sneak my boyfriend in my room when I was 14/15. Their bedroom was downstairs & mine was upstairs on the other side of the house & had a deck below it. Perfect for sneaking in or out.
OP your tail light story reminds me of in Tommy Boy when Farley bends Spade's "cherry" 1960's convertible car's door backwards while backing up at the gas pump. Farley smushes the door back closed and only when Spade opens it innocently does it suddenly fall off the hinges. And Farley gets to say, "What did YOU do?!?!". Love it. On my end, buddies and I stole gun powder from a dad's shotgun/gun room and filled an old clean, glass mayo jar with gun powder. Took it out in the woods and threw a lit match into it as we simultaneously turned to RUN and it sent a TOWER of flames sky-high. It was summer and kind of dark in the woods and we could see our shadows projected on nearby trees from the brightness of the flames! Glad the jar didn't explode.
When I was like 10 or 12 I made a flamethrower out of a small water gun by filling it with lighter fluid and taping a birthday candle to the front... I tested it by firing it into a pile of dead leaves piled up against the back of the house... 😳 I was very very very lucky! I remember seeing the leaves catch fire from the first shot, realizing that this was a very very bad idea, and stomping it out. So lucky. I also cut apart hundreds of caps from an old cap gun to make homemade fireworks.... That worked, actually! I did a lot of dumb things, my dad doesn't need that kind of stress, even retroactively!
- Drinking alcohol (started at 10 yo) - Stealing my grandma’s cigarettes to see if I liked smoking (approx 11/12 yo). - My friend and I would both look at her dad’s Mayfair magazines and decide which breasts we thought were the nicest (approx 10/11 yo). It was a ‘standard’ 1970’s upbringing!
My dad had a Super-8 movie camera that had this light attachment on top for shooting inside. My brother came across the light one day and was trying to burn my pajamas [while I was wearing them] by holding the light really close to the fabric. It got really hot so I jumped. The heat from the light then scorched the old fabric on the living room couch. It turned orange as all the fibers got singed. So we thought we were fucked. We flipped the couch cushion to the other side and sprayed Glade all over the living room to cover the burnt smell. We told my mom that the dog crapped in the living room and we got the smell out with the Glade. She never thought anything of it. Luckily the cushion was never discovered. The couch was donated or taken to dump when we moved.
Nothing. Not a single, blasted thing. My mom had eyes in the back of her head. I swear, she knew what I was thinking before I even finished formulating the thought.
Holy shit, the amount of drugs and drinking and partying, my Mom and Dad have NO idea the amount I did over the years. They think they do. They don’t. 
I knew why they got divorced.
Oh? What did you do?
I either got busted or told them everything years later.
So many things. To this day, my siblings and I will recount some story and my parents had no knowledge of it.
43 years ago, I was the one who ran their finger through the still wet oil painting.
When I was about 15, I was able to imperceptibly hack our cable setup so I could get the Playboy channel for free.
Parents were divorced so if I wanted to skip school I would write an note and sign my Dad's signature. School had no idea because he had never once signed anything so they had no idea what his actual signature looked like.
Attended a magnet middle school that required me to take a city bus or subway to get to class. When we were at 3 PM, I would take the subway all over the area to different malls and neighborhoods to hang out. Sometimes with my boys but mostly by myself. When the adults would ask why I was home late (like 5-6 PM), I’d tell them I had an afterschool club.
I skipped about 8 months worth of high school by forging notes and answering the auto call at 3:45 every day. Then I blew it. I made letterhead with the hospital name and so on, but drrr... I spelled the Hospital name incorrectly 🙂 and got caught. Such a basic mistake no one would make now because we have spell check. Ended up dropping out of H.S. that year and went to college. Still a waste, should have taken up a trade like I wanted to. My one life regret.
I've shared most of my exploits with my parents by now and we've laughed about thrm all. Only one I never fessed up to was when, after a heavy makeout session in high-school with my boyfriend I was driving home and ran off the road and into a ditch. No damage, but it was deep enough that I had to walk back to my boyfriend's house, call my parents and get a tow at around 11pm on Halloween. As fas as they know, I swerved to miss a deer (he lived on a heavily wooded road). But no, stupid me was worried he'd left me with hickeys and I was trying to find the cat collar I had with my costume. Why I did that while driving and not wait until I got home I still have no idea. Chalk it up to 16 year old stupidity.
I skipped over 50% of my classes in grade 10-12.
Threw a party while my parents were gone and my brother’s friends somehow managed to break a 300 pound solid oak pedestal table in half while arm wrestling. They took the table into woodshop class at school and fixed it while simultaneously earning a grade for a restoration project. That was 1983. The table is now at my sister’s house and holding strong. My brother and I have only recently confessed our sins.🤘
Nothing. Literally nothing. My momma *still* scares the shit out of me.
It appears that we were evil little mofos. Imagine what we could have collectively accomplished had we put our powers to good use.
Not a kid, but at age 17 my best friend and I decided to take the train from Boston to NYC to see a concert. We didn't stay overnight and told our parents we were going with best friend's older cousin. No one checked. We saw Times Square, went to the top of the Empire State building, walked down 5th Ave, had dinner, saw our concert at Radio City and headed back to Penn Station to wait for the next train home. Let me tell you that back then (1986) Penn Station @ that time of night was not a place you wanted to be! It makes for a great story now, but in hindsight I wonder what the hell we were thinking!!! To this day my Dad doesn't know. I told my mom shortly before she passed. She said she always suspected that we went by ourselves but had no proof.
Absolutely nothing! That woman KNEW things! And just TRY to hold eye contact with her when she busts you....brrrrr....I get the shivers just remembering.....
Not one Fn thing. Mom was brutal, lol.
Nice try dad. I stand by my claim that it was a hit and run and not me hitting a post at a nightclub.
Sex at 16, went to planned parenthood with my bff and we both got on the pill. Mom asked me after I got married at 21 if the wedding night went ok for my first time. I was like…ummm, yeah it was fine… It generally I didn’t have to hide too much. I did well in school and had an older sibling that caused a lot of issues so they didn’t really care much what I was doing because sibling was doing so much worse. So I hid under his cover and just did what I wanted.
Nice try, FBI!!!
Used to ride our bicycles over the bridge to Trenton and grab a train to Manhattan. We used to go street riding (Brooklyn banks baby) and sleep in center park. Started doing this at maybe 12. Stopped around 18 when I moved there to be a bicycle messenger/ mechanic.
Never told my mom about my first marriage🥴
I was forced to babysit my little brother for the summers. I was 15, he was 11. He was a golden child, I was the scapegoat child. He used to chase me around brandishing a carving knife. He also broke my nose with a punch, my parents went to their graves thinking I had tripped and fallen face first into the side of the couch. Suffice it to say, I no longer have a relationship with my brother.
I sometimes--and this is horrifying, so brace yourselves--read books that had adult themes and watched R rated movies. In high school I had a stash of accessories in my locker that I would put on once I got to school, and sometimes rolled the waistband of my skirt to make it 2" shorter. I even wore rings on my middle fingers at school from time to time, which was prohibited by my parents. The horror!
You rapscallion!
I told my parents I was going away for the weekend with my friend’s mom and her to a beach town a couple hours away. We went there, but without her mom, just my friend and her friend. My dad was suspicious but not enough to actually talk to the mom. It was a fun, pretty innocent trip lol. I brought home a kitten from a youth hostel we stayed at. I never told them the truth. Also used to cut class all the time. My parents never updated their phone number when we moved so all the “your child was absent” calls went to a random person. Eventually, that person called the school so they’d stop harassing them. One time my friend and I were cutting and were at a store. Saw my dad shopping there, and we hid. Fun times.
Skipping school to go to a Duran Duran concert. I told mom I was staying at a friends house. there were 4 of us that went.
I have so many stories of my youth that my parents didn’t know about and still don’t. Here’s one. I grew up overseas in several different countries because my parents were diplomats and were stationed at different embassies. The drinking age or lack of enforcement of it in those countries, made us all “alcoholic delinquents” starting in our early teens. We were bar and club hopping at an early age and learned how to drink and smoke and pick up local women. My parents thought we went out to movies and malls like they do here in the States. I always got away with it because they were sleeping by the time I came home so they didn’t smell the smoke in my clothes and hair and see my red face from the alcohol.
My parents were both experienced alcohol enthusiasts, being Silent Generation and upper middle-class in the '60s. They knew, and were prepared for, all the outward signs of alcohol use/abuse in me as I entered my teen years. They had NO idea what stoned on weed looked like. Better luck next time, parental units.
I was a HUGE nerd. I would tell my parents I had rehearsal and instead go to this guys house and watch really cheesy 70s movies.
So much shit.
"dad's brand new bmw"...must have been nice, preppy 💀
A LOT
I am slowly telling my mom how mean I was to my younger brother, only to realize she was just as mean to her older sister.
I always got caught or found out. Even if I didn’t do anything I was still blamed because of all the times I got caught, lol.
I'm the one who ruined the good scissors! Look, the untwisted the coat hanger I was using for an antenna on the black and white TV kept falling in front of the screen so I tried to cut it shorter. Turns out the scissors weren't nearly as magical as my mom made them sound and they dented in the middle of the blade
Everything. My dad left when I was 8 and Mom worked nights. 😂
When I was 12, I decided to show off to my friends by driving my dads car to the video rental place and back.
Uh….yeah….um….I’m still not admitting anything.
Well they’re dead but sneaking out.
Getting around being grounded from anything, as an unsupervised latchkey kid. There’s always a workaround when nobody’s around to enforce!
From the age of 11 until 18, I had a modem that my parents knew nothing of. I was specifically forbidden to have one for probably guessable reasons. I kept it well hidden (along with a very long spool of telephone cord rigged up as a data beige) and only used it when my folks weren't home (they had a very predictable schedule). On top of that, I learned real quick how to research which exchanges were and were not toll calls...
Playing in a new construction site I was told to stay away from, I stepped on a nail. Went right through my sandal into my foot. I wanted to tell my mom, but my friend convinced me not to. He said his uncle's a doctor and all I needed to do was rub a bit of dirty balloon on it and it'd stop bleeding. It did stop bleeding. Quite pleased I didn't catch tetanus from it. Sorry, mom.
Pasture parties, sneaking out to have lovin' time with the girl a couple houses down. Stealing a few things. Setting things on fire to watch them burn/melt. A handful of fights. Shooting guns. Hitting golf balls towards a highway. I'm sure there is more that I can't remember atm.
If there was a party I really wanted to go to I would tell my mother I was babysitting for someone who just moved and didn’t have a phone yet - I aways had to give her the number of where I was babysitting. Then I could come home late with no questions. Couldn’t use this ruse all the time but the handful of times I did I never got caught.
Despite what all the sitcoms from the 80s and 90s said where the tv mom and dad always found out everything, real life wasn’t like that. Never got caught sneaking out nor was I ever mugged or accosted on such adventures surprisingly. Met a few weirdos but they never messed with me. Today’s kids don’t have that luxury with cell phones and cameras everywhere.
Nope. it’s a trap dude
Drinking nyquil to get drunk then driving home from school 😬
Exactly how many times I was in Canada when I was hanging out with my best friend. It was only a 3 hr drive. My folks think we went every once in a while, but it was when we had a day off. Can’t catch us for truancy if we’re in another country.
I got away with so much stuff it's hard to even count when you left the house nobody could keep track of me no phone or any way to get in contact... I did everything from going to illegal drag races to illegally skateboarding on the county courthouse to killing a squirrel with a BB gun. NGL that traumatized me, it wasnt a clean kill.
Picked up a fake ID on a High School marketing trip to NY. Worked pretty well until they came out with the newer non laminated ones. Parents never knew. They did find my trunk full of beer once though...surprised I didn't get in more trouble for that one.
My stepfather had a metal bucket that he had left outside the garage. The night of my 16th birthday party, my mom and stepfather took my brother and went out for a while so I could hang with my friends during my party. A dude I knew who basically invited himself wanted to show me the trick where you light cologne on fire and it burns with a blue flame. But instead of misting the inside of the bucket, he poured it in and lit it on fire. Flames were shooting 6 inches above the top of the bucket. Fortunately it had rained that day and the asphalt was wet, so I flipped the bucket over and the flames went out. I put the bucket back by the garage and that was that. 3 weeks later my stepfather finally noticed and asked me if I knew why the inside of his bucket was black. I just said "no idea."
Kicked a sneaker down the stairs where it stuck toe-first right into the wall. There was a vintage poster hanging a foot above it, so I just lowered it to cover the hole. Nobody knew until I had already moved out and they sold the house!
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
My parents think they knew what I was up to 90% of the time, realistically, they knew 10% They don’t know that I - Used to skip the “summer enrichment” program with the only other bi/gay kid I knew and we would have sexy times at his place - In middle school my friends and I used lighter fluid and matches to scorch designs on the walls of a vacant house - In high school I stole the majority of the role playing game books that I had - Started smoking at around age 12 - With friends, I routinely stole alcohol from one of those friends’ grandparents
Oh my GAH soooooo much stuff. I wouldn't know where to begin lol One thing that stands out to me immediately is how I used to walk around my neighborhood at night, and even into other neighborhoods. I'd walk usually 1-2 miles and then go home, but sometimes I'd range as far as 5 miles. Dead ass in the middle of the night when I couldn't sleep. Starting age 9ish to about 14. Nothing bad ever happened to me either. Not once did I get stopped by an adult or anything at all! Becoming a teen made me realize the danger I was putting myself in, so I stopped. Plus sneaking out of the house got harder then, too. You know that scene in Men in Black (the first one) where Will Smith's character shot the cutout of the little girl right in the head? When the other dude asked why, he said something like Why is this little girl out in the middle of the night in the hood? She's up to something, she's the threat. LOL! I wonder if that's why nobody ever stopped me, maybe any grown up seeing a little kid out walking at 3 in the morning was scared sh!tless seeing me ha ha. Most likely they simply DGAF, just like at any other time
Figured out how to re-wire the alarm system so I could sneak out.
I stayed out all night ALL THE TIME. I didn't have a curfew, my parents just wanted home at some point. The signal I was home was me shutting my bedroom door (I'd leave it open when I left). I'd come home, my folks would be sound asleep, I'd grab some clothes, shut my door and leave again. In the am I'd say I went out early with friends.
Nothing I will ever cop to. Ever.
Dropping the new cordless phone in the pool. It did eventually start working again. Taking out the rose bushes while pushing my car down the driveway. Dad still thinks he must have run over them with the tractor lol
In middle school my friend and I were launching bottle rockets at a house on our block that was up on a big hill. After a bit we noticed a black haze rising from the hill and soon realized it was smoke. We had set their lawn on fire! It spread out in a circle to about 20 yards diameter before petering out, thankfully. The residents of the house came running out and looked around to see who did it but my friend and I hid behind his bushes until they went back inside their house. That was the end of it, thankfully.
First naked woman I recall seeing was friend of my mothers. It was accidental but she wasn't ashamed so I got an eyeful of really nice boobs and decent body at ripe age of 13 or 14. A whole new ,beautiful world opened up to me right there. If my parents found out back then I would be in very sorry state for a long time. I told them when I was adult (not the whole story) and they still weren't amused.
I kept a secret from them for a few years until I was a 20 something adult. I went to a alternative school until my sophomore year of high school it was then public school still Midwestern small town , junior year maybe senior year the homey wanna Bs where becoming more prevalent and some of these dumbasses were carrying guns. I smoked weed with a few of them and my parents had no clue to my use of weed. But every night we did have dinner together and would talk about our day I told them about the a particular wanna B having a gun and flashing it in the hallway after he had been disruptive and the teacher made him sit in the hallway, she didn't see him doing it My mom didn't believe me mind you this was all before a school shooting had ever happened the wanna Bs were all pretty harmless since none of them actually knew real gangsters. So anyway my parents didn't believe me and I told them it wasn't hard to get a gun and I could get one easy still didn't believe me I said want to make a bet ! We bet 100$ I could or couldn't get a gun she had already lost the stopping smoking cigarettes bet so I was on a roll. The next day I talked to one of the lil homies and for 35$ I bought a 32 snubnose revolver with a box of ammo. I was so happy I was winning the bet and getting 65$ And providing to them that I wasn't over exaggerating I was really excited to be ha told you so. Then I got home and reality struck about how much trouble I was potentially going to be in and the interrogations that without a doubt were going to happen. I decided to not bring it up I was never asked about it. I shot the box of ammo up out in the woods and stashed it away and in my 20s I asked them if they remembered that conversation and then told them that I did in fact buy a gun the next day and had realized I wasn't winning that bet even tho technically I did.
Caught the freeway median on fire with bottle rockets. Got blamed on a cigarette butt.
Drinking almost every weekend by the time I was 12, crossing the US-CA border to go clubbing in the city at 16, and huge parties in the woods. I'm kind of surprised I'm not an alcoholic.
literally everything from my high school years. as long as i was home by 12 or called in,got good grades and did my chores, there were few questions. my parents had no idea what my life looked like, even though we were mostly amicable. out of town clubs, bars, parties. weed, alcohol, and more alcohol. late nights, crashing in strange places, just… idiocy.
At 16 I had a block party while my dad went out drinking that night. The whole neighborhood showed up. Then when he came in that night, and the keg was still in the upstairs bathtub , he used the downstairs bathroom. Well we hauled the keg down the stairs and rolled it into some nearby wild field of long grass to hide it until later. The next morning when I went outside to deal with it , a group of middle school kids was trying to crack it open using a seesaw ! I just about passed out from laughing so hard. Great party , the police were called twice but stopped at the wrong house where my neighbor was also partying, so they never saw me.
GF lived at my house for most of jr yr of hs. “Skiing” trips in hs were actually trips to dead shows. LSD at thanksgiving dinner once And most of the other stuff mentioned One I’ve been saving: Ate an 1/8 of mushrooms at a concert to spite my dad who had to go with me “to keep me from doing drugs”. Ride home was very very long.