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I was apt to think of my father today and was remembering my grandmother telling me how he came to lose his thumb at the age of 13. Like many boys do at that age he became fascinated by explosives and began "appropriating" chemicals during science class at boarding school and transporting them back on the train to manufacture gunpowder among other crude explosives in the garage at home during the school holidays. What whim inclined him to fill a large toothpaste tube with a mixture of these explosives and how he thought it was a good idea to bang the end of the metal tube shut with a hammer was never fully explained. The first my grandmother learned of this stupidity was when she got back from a shopping expedition to find the wall of the garage splattered with blood midst the smoking debris from the ensuing explosion. The neighbours had felt the concussion and seen the cloud of acrid smoke billowing from the garage and had transported my father and the mangled remains of his thumb to the nearest hospital where it was decided that his digit was a lost cause... and so he became a minor 9 fingered celebrity among his peers at school for a while.

I in turn managed to burn the garden shed to the ground while experimenting with a crude petrol fueled flame thrower adapted from a hand operated insecticide dispenser...

Any other examples of similar stupidity here...

Standing on top of a gate post, one of those with a flattish pyramid top. I avoided breaking any bones as I cushioned my fall with my head. I convinced the parents of my friend that I was OK, no blood or cuts or even a lump.

Or melting broken lead soldiers, a splatter hit my forehead and what ever first aid I applied worked as my parents never seemed to notice the melted skin. Brushing against an unshielded light bulb in a tank I had constructed had the same effect.

The threat of parental retribution was feared far more than any transitory pain.

I was a careful child, using suitably long fuses to my explosives and taking proper care ascending 30 feet vertical ladders on a ship.

Similar with the bomb - 4 inches of copper tube, one end flattened in the vice, packed with a mixture of sugar and weedkiller. Second end flattened in vice down to level of explosive was twice the length of the first flattened end, so I doubled it over to make it look symmetrical. This produced a crack in the outer copper layer which my mate thought would let the explosion out so he proceeded to seal it by hammering it closed.

When my ears stopped ringing I discovered that it had split his hand from the join between third and fourth fingers neatly all the way back to the wrist.

First time I dialled 999, though not the last...

Made illicit gun-cotton in the chemy lab based on a cotton shirt cut into tiny squares. You may know that gun-cotton will burn like solid rocket fuel if the combustion is not contained otherwise it will explode. My plan was to put the gun-cotton in a strong glued paper cylinder with wings and tail attached so that it looked rather like an F104 with a bit of dihedral. Tests were performed on safe propellant burning rate and the aerodynamic performance of the missile. The only design problem was the exhaust nozzle as this obviously needed to be heat resistant. I settled on a plaster of Paris plug firmly held in the correct place by cross pins which contained a conical nozzle of what I guessed to be the right size.

Come the day and holding the missile in my hand for an assisted launch I lit the Jetex fuse. I heard the main rocket ignite and started to launch the missile into the blue. The noise of the fuel burn was rapidly replaced by a shocking concussion that stunned me for a second, in retrospect it was obvious what had happened, the hole in the exhaust nozzle had been way too small to handle the gas flow, pressure had built up inside the cylinder which had split wide open without, thank Heavens, the gun-cotton actually exploding. I stood there stunned as all of the hundreds of tiny squares of cotton I had made settled down around me like snowflakes.

.

Come on girls, confess.

No2 daughter at her second boarding school was caught peering through the window into the board of governors meeting.

She was suspended, inverted, from the roof. Her head mistress agreed that boarding school (her second) was perhaps not suited to her.

She retired as a sqn ldr three years ago.

Rode down a flight of steps on a small bike.The doctor was able to stitch my chin back together.

Similar to ribrash, aged 8 rode my bicycle down a very steep hill but 'lost it, near the bottom. Made contact with the road chin first resulting in a seriously rearranged chin!
Again, as ribrash, doctor, local GP, managed to stitch things back together assisted by mother who had been fetched from home. Still got the scars(if you could see through the beard!)

500 feet hill, right hand curve at the bottom, camber, brakes, curve, gravity. Mathematically there was no way of avoiding the departure. My friend and I did a formation crash. Wheels contacted the kerb and we both continued ahead. Must have been doing at least 30. Were both 15 but in school shorts. Matron removed most of the gravel and uniform was salvageable. I had bits of gravel emerging for the next 4 years. Final 'repair' 60 years later when chemo cured the last effect.

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Sun Sep 27, 2020 4:57 pm

Come on girls, confess.

No2 daughter at her second boarding school was caught peering through the window into the board of governors meeting.

She was suspended, inverted, from the roof. Her head mistress agreed that boarding school (her second) was perhaps not suited to her.

She retired as a sqn ldr three years ago.

Her being suspended for eavesdropping on a governors meeting is understandable! Her prowess in achieving her position in that case, i.e. suspended from the roof a tad reckless but also somewhat laudable IMHO and her position later in life most laudable.

I initially read her being suspended from the roof as being a punishment for spying on the governors, a most novel and extreme punishment, akin to crucifying the whole of the first form as a mass punishment for a theft of tuppence from the tuck shop fund!

Clearly no glass ceilings in your doughty daughter's case PN. You must be very proud of her.

Tame after all the above, but it was traumatic at the time. Shy child.

Burnt down me dad's rhubarb. Narrative: slugs, straw, trusted with the bonfire then went to chat with daughter of next-door allotment holder.
t'only time I had six of the best from dad (aforementioned daughter looking on - the shame of it) and the first - and I think the only - time I had heard the old man swear.
Learned a few words that day tho'

10 or 12 year old PP decided to eliminate fire ant hills and residents there of by burning them. Accelerant was gas from lawn mower fueling can. Pour gas on ant hill and light it off. Not a big enough blaze so, of course, add more gas.
Flames came up the stream of gas from the can , so it was discarded post haste. The round can rolled along spewing flaming gas across the field of grass that was longish.
Somehow managed to stomp out the fire before it spread to the trees lining the field or our house.
One of many near Darwin Award nominations.

PP

TGG, at her previous school, expelled by any other name, bandaged in toilet roll, outside headmistress rooms, making ghostly sounds.

Do boys have an inbuilt Darwinian switch?

Find steep hill, make soap box cart or sledge. That there is a road or other impediment at the bottom is not considered.

Pontius Navigator wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 28, 2020 8:43 am

Do boys have an inbuilt Darwinian switch?

Find steep hill, make soap box cart or sledge. That there is a road or other impediment at the bottom is not considered.

Cousin in me in same cart in the middle of the road hurtling down towards a stop street when a car turns into the road in front of us (what a surprise to see a car on the road)! Nowhere for us to go but into the kerb and the cart ejects both of us at some 30 miles an hour. I lie covered in grazes and totally winded but otherwise unscathed. Cousin knocked briefly unconscious. Poor driver (who was entirely innocent in the light of our flagrant abuse of the public road) bundles us both into her car and attends at the local doctor who covers me in Mercurochrome and gives me a long ticking off. Cousin kept at the surgery under observation for the afternoon and is later picked up by his father who kindly doesn't mention the incident to my father and pays the doctor's bill. The lady driver actually offered to pay the bill for the doctor's visit which really was kind of her as a bill to my address would have resulted in a sound thrashing from my father and no pocket money for a year. Still given a thick ear by my mother who can't but notice all the Mercurochrome.

Picked me Dad's cherished tomatoes and threw them at the wall to see the splat they made, when he found out I had never seen him so mad and it was my first experience of six of the best.. He still remembered forty years later...

Now this would not be possible in these days of Elf and Safety, but at the age of 7 at Primary school during a sewing lesson I managed to iron the top of my hand. Not wanting to end up in the corner yet again I didn't confess to anyone and still can't believe that I got away with it as I developed blisters on top of my knuckles. I suspect that the teacher and my mother knew, but didn't let on as I was so stoical about it.....I didn't even utter a wimper. Perhaps sucking my knuckles was a give away......

I was about 10 yrs old and I had just learned how to rid a bicycle. My birthday present was a second-hand bicycle on which I travelled far & wide from my village in Derbyshire. One day I was pedalling along without a care in the world, mind in neutral when I realised that my front wheel had hit something. Imagine my horror when I realised that I'd ignored a halt sign, gone straight onto a main road and my front wheel was now touching the driver's door of a police car! That resulted in a 7/6 fine and a severe scolding from all the adults involved. I still go cold thinking that I could have gone straight under a lorry on that main road! And to think I had only passed my cycling proficiency test a few weeks earlier.
And when I had the 5-yearly reviews of my security clearances in the RAF and the Civil Service for the next 40 years I had to solemnly declare that 7/6 fine on all the documentation

Was helping Dad cut down trees that had fallen on the house after severe storm....went to the other side of the roof...sat on the edge of the gutter, threw down the long knife I was holding, after it hit the ground eased myself off the gutter to jump down....pants got snagged on the gutter such that I tilted 'nose down attitude', first thing that hit was my right wrist broke like the 'S' bend in a toilet, next was my head remember thinking I was brain 'f**ked' for life...then it was my rib cage that landed on the tiled edge of the path...cracked ribs....

I no longer go onto a roof...40 years later

Does 16 count as a child? I stayed on at the ATC Gliding School as a Staff Cadet after my A&B course and was taught how to drive the Landrover to recover the winch cable to the launch point after each pair of launches. One snowy winter's day during the lunch break a mate and I took said vehicle out of sight behind some trees near the de Havilland Sea Vixen factory on Christchurch airfield and took it in turns to skid around in the snow. Mate was driving when the skids he was doing suddenly bit on a dry area of tarmac. Landrover doors were a bit flimsy and as the Landrover threatened to roll I was was flung out of the passenger side. One ankle and foot was deeply cut to shreds on something and in my minds eye I can still see the blood squelching over the top of my shoes every time I put weight on my foot. A trip to A&E was required and the scars are still visible to remind me....

C16, that belongs in the other thread. Stoopid things I did before I grew up.

From observing dining in nights over many years I think the upper age of growing up is now pretty close to 30.

Above 30, STID once I grew up.