Stoopid

Apparently I am a big copycatting copycat because every time burghbaby writes a blog post, I find myself thinking – ooo yeah – I can talk about that, too! But since a recent post was about childhood stupidity, she doesn’t mind me copying her. I think it’s because she likes to hear how stupid I have been. And I have been spectacularly stupid.

While I never used a Slip n Slide indoors like burghbaby, I did use one on a hill. With a rubber raft. And baby oil. And because we lost the pegs that hold the plastic slide down, we figured big rocks and bricks would work. Needless to say, one of the other participants ended up with a bloody, broken face.

And then there was the sled riding down a giant hill in the middle of the street. We’d go all the way to the top of the neighborhood and WHEEEEEE down 5 blocks to the bottom, risking our lives the whole way – particularly at every intersection, since not all of them had stop signs.

Or the time my friend Carol and I found some un-exploded firecrackers and decided to set them off. We were about 7 at them time. Stupid enough as it is, but one of them didn’t have a fuse. And being raised by a MacGyver kind of dad, I figured I would just make one, instead. So I stuffed a dried stem in there and lit it. And you know what? A dried stem doesn’t have the same slow burn as a firecracker fuse. It immediately burned down and exploded in my hands. I didn’t have feeling in three if my fingers for an entire month. I never told my parents and suffered in silence because I was afraid to get in trouble.

But my stupidity peaked –as it generally does – in my teen years.

Evidenced by the time My friend Tee and I decided to shoot her brothers bow in the house. Inside her parents tiny 12x12 bedroom. The arrow embedded in their headboard was not easily explained.

Or the time we had a (comparatively) warm day in January when there was about a foot of snow on the ground. And we decided to lay out. In bikinis. On the roof. That was covered in snow. Which led to talk of swimming in the summer. Which led to getting out the baby pool, hooking the hose up to the sink, and running it out the window and filling the pool with hot water. Which led to the idea that it was like a Jacuzzi, but that it needed bubbles. Which led to adding more hot water and a bunch of dish soap. Which led to hives. Luckily, it didn’t lead to hypothermia or pneumonia.

Bu the perhaps the biggest boneheaded move I ever made was when Tee’s sister B and I decided we wanted to play with some sparklers. But it was hot outside, so we thought we’d do them inside. After burning a couple, we started getting all science-y and wondering about the “coating” and how it worked. So we crumbled several of them, piled it in a glass ashtray (one of those fancy ones from back in the day) and lit it. It was pretty cool. Especially the part where it burned so got that it melted the freaking glass.

But it doesn’t end there! In the excitement of the melting ashtray, we somehow managed to drop a regular burning sparkler and not notice until it burned a several inches long, black scar into the thick, red living room carpet (did I mention that we were doing this in the middle of the newly redone living room?). We were dead and we knew it. But how are we still alive to tell the story, you ask? Remember I told you I was raised by MacGyver? Well, I came up with a solution. First, I got a razor – not a razor blade or anything, but a disposable Bic – and shaved off as much of the burnt carpet as I could. This left a slightly browned indent. Next, I got a red crayon that matched the carper perfectly, heated it a little and colored over the burn. And somehow it worked! There was a slight depression, but not really very noticeable. We were hoping it would buy us enough time to be able to play stupid when we were questioned, but the questioning never came. Despite Tee’s father’s eagle eye and her mother’s obsessive cleaning, no one ever noticed. We told them about it years later, when we were grown and they were redecorating the room again and they were shocked that they never knew. They did, however, bring up the arrows in their headboard…

Sadly, these are just a small sampling of my childhood stupid moves – I could go on for days with the rest. So tell me – what was the stupidest thing you did as a kid?