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  • Driving a tractor by myself, when I was a tween. I was driving a tractor before I could reach the clutch, I had to get off the seat and stand to use it, not that there's much gear-shifting driving a tractor through a field. I had a dirtbike out at the farm as well. Built a little fort in the woods.

    • I used to drive a land cruiser around the farm while the men threw hay bales off the back tray. I would've been about seven, pottering along in first gear. I was too small to throw hay.

  • I'm an Australian, as a 16 ur old I'd slong my gun over mu shoulder and rodee my trail bike up the range to hunt for pet food. Drape a gutted dead roo over the back of my motobike and bring it jwome, meat for the dogs and skin it. No one batted an eyelid or said anything.

    Now I'd be labeled a terrorist, have police helicopters chase me down and be in jail for decades.

  • Before the age of 20: Made gunpowder and made our own enormous firecrackers/hand grenades, played with matches, climbed to the very top of very tall trees, whittled with knives all day long, cutting into high pressure car tyres with knives, made “bazookas” with firework rockets and shot them after other kids on the street, made petrol powered go-carts and raced them on public streets, disappeared out to play all day and came home for dinner, swam in lakes, climbed rocks with sheer drops into the bay, disturbed enormous ant-nests and got bitten all over (I’m sorry ants, that was a shit thing to do), dipped our fingers in melted wax, placed small stones on train tracks and waited for them to get pulverised, played a crazy game that involved throwing knives into the ground right next to bare feet, chopped firewood with sharp axes, burnt large holes in the carpet in my room (turned out a piece of tin foil was not sufficient insulation for burning sparker powder), did a lot of sleeping outside, threw each other into forests of nettles for fun, crawled through drain pipes running under the road, skateboarded down hills on country side roads, built our own skateboard ramp out of doors and nails that were sticking out ready to impale us, walked on thin ice because we liked the cracking it caused, did night time hikes through swamps, wild water rafting, sprayed burning gasoline out of bicycle pumps, played with aerosol cans and lighters, flew gliders age 15, got drunk a lot from 15 onwards (not at the same time as flying), took down the school computers with a homegrown “virus” (that’s being generous, a few scripts that modified autoexec.bat to make all the school’s computers print “teachers are dumb” instead of booting; it still caused them to call in “the experts”, got into fights and ended up going to A&E after being hit in the head with an iron rod, raided countless pear and apple plantations, played with magnifying glasses in the sharp sun and lit up a great deal of forest floors, rode cars down old train tracks, shot guns, shot air rifles, shot bows, shot cross bows, shot sling shots, maced each other, built large swings that threw us over a cliff side and four-five meter drops into water, played around inside a nuclear-protected naval bunker and accidentally activated the emergency lock down alarm, tipped over an army truck after being let out to to “do a bit of terrain driving” by our staff sergeant, set up and blew up 600 kg of TNT to demonstrate the effect of a MRLS cluster bomb in front of the Danish Queen (fun story, it blew her hat off from the pressure wave), fells asleep behind the wheel after a full day of firefighting training and ended up putting my army jeep into a field, made friends with a Soviet diplomat who tried to pump my brother and I for information about our dad’s job as a military attaché (unfortunately the colonel got sent home to Russia after being made persona non grata) - though he did teach us how to ski in the process, set up our own 380V electrics for a enormous LAN party we organised and electrocuted myself, dialled into a lot of weird BBSes to exchange all sorts of pirated software with anonymous network users, war-dialled various remote systems and tried to hack our way into them, drove all over Europe in various wrecks (accidentally smuggled weed over several international borders, which was especially frustrating as I didn’t touch the stuff and didn’t even know it had been brought), did magic mushrooms and had amazing times and dreadful bad trips (fuck MAO inhibitors), went exploring in a fenced off zone that carried nuclear warning signs (Paldiski, not long after the wall came down), detonated gas canisters of all shapes and sizes, etc etc

    It was a fun childhood, to be honest, and I’m grateful for it.

  • Stuck a housekey into an electrical outlet to pretend I was driving a car. Not sure how I didn't die, honestly.

    • I once set fire to a tissue to see what would happen. Fortunately I'd had the foresight to have a glass of water just incase.

  • Play on the streets unsupervised have knives, playing on building sites and similar and that was about at a guess 6 or 7. We also played in the local park and generally got up to mischief.

  • Dangerous then and especially now, but my oldest brother lit off a firework in our backyard, right near or around when school was getting out. We lived a couple blocks away from an elementary school. It was loud enough that the school thought someone was shooting.

    This was mid-late 2000s. I imagine if he did it today, the police would have absolutely arrested him without a second thought.

    • lol zoomer, oh no, not a firecracker. we had the anarchist's cookbook.

      • I don't remember what it was, but it certainly wasn't a firecracker. I don't know where exactly my parents used to get them, but they used to get illegal fireworks (illegal in our state) by crossing over state lines, if I remember correctly. Neither me nor my parents remember what he set off, but it definitely wasn't something wimpy like a firecracker.

        Edit:

        We lived in an area where you had more strict rulings on what is a legal firework to have and shoot off, so we definitely had some stuff that was definitely quite a bit stronger than what we could get in state.

  • Not really a young child, but in my late teens my parents told me I had no curfew.

    Their only rule was, lock the front door when you get back, and let one of them know I was home, even really late.

    I would leave at 8pm in my truck, drive to pick up my friends, then hit various late night stops like Dairy Queen, Subway, Denny's, etc. My friends and I would spend like an hour or two at each place, chilling, playing cards, eating snacks, chatting, and then go hit the next place.

    Often we would all find some random parking lot and just chill there chatting and listening to music. I would frequently get back at 2-3am.

    Many gen-Z kids don't even drive. My spouse's youngest sister is 20 and doesn't have a drivers license. She hardly hangs out with her friends in person at all, same with most of them. They all just game together on Discord. I was a pretty mild mannered kid when I was that age, but they make me seem like a wild west bandit lol.

    Also sleepovers apparently aren't a thing any more?? A ton of parents are totally against them. I guess I kind of get it. Idk, I used to have sleepovers all the time with my friends. Pretty much everybody's birthday party was a sleepover from age 13-17. I remember staying up super late, playing GameCube/XBox, playing truth or dare, and stuffing ourselves with candy and soda, super fun memories.

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