People Are Confessing the Worst Things They Unknowingly Did As Kids

Well I figured out I fucked up in the aftermath for sure but my actions were innocent... when I was about 3 years old at home with my brother (5 years older. He was sick that day), my mother took my sister to the bus stop about 8 houses down for her to go to school.I got the bright idea watching cartoons with my brother that I really wanted to use the telephone! I was bored and I wanted to talk to someone on the phone! Problem was when I got downstairs is that I didnt know anybody's number... so I dialed the only number I did know - 911 (the police for those who live in a place that uses different numbers). A nice lady picked up and we got to talking. Pretty quickly I wanted to impress the police lady (I'm such a charmer with the ladies obviously) so I wanted to show her how cool and also how grown up I was. My line was:

"My daddy is at work and my mom is at the bus stop! I'm home with my brother, and we have a gun!!" (I knew about our pellet gun and that it was somewhere in the garage - obviously stored well out of my reach but hey, I wanted to impress her right!?). So there my mom is chatting with the other mothers when 5 police cars come screaming down the road sirens on, tear into our driveway and the officers rush out and approach the house, guns drawn. My mom is like "I BETTER GO!"

Had a very long serious chat with a few police officers that day lol. It was also the first time I lied to the police, making up a story to try to justify it and naturally sticking to an unbelievable account of what happened because i didnt want to tell them. I stuck to my story. My cousin was the first person to get the truth out of me. He was talking to me a while later and with a very sly smile on my face I told him, "I did it because I was bored"

/Turnbills/

I might win this post. In third grade there was a big stupid kid a few grades above that bullied all the kids in school. One day I started talking with one of his other victims who was also my best friend. We started talking about ways to get this kid back for all his wrong doings. Let’s call it “operation, take no guff”. We knew where he lived and decided we were going to desecrate the entire outside of his house one night.
We started by loading up an old backpack with delicious treats that would be hard to clean off a house. I grabbed a freezer bag and went around my yard collecting all the cat poop I had yet to eat. This didn’t quite fill the bag but lucky for me my friend had a dog and a single turd of his own. Once the freezer bag was just about full I headed home and put the backpack the highest cabinet in my room all the way in the back behind a few things.

Over the next couple days we talked about “operation, take no guff”. I ended up forgetting about the bag for a couple months and it started to stink up my room for some reason. One day while my parents were at work I grabbed the bag and hid it in the garage and then forgot about it again. It was easy to hide in the garage because my step dad was a hoarder. At around the bags six month anniversary my step dad started saying it smelled like something died in the garage. This of course refreshed my memory that I had a five pound bag of “my precious” stowed away like some kind of terrible pirate booty.

One day after school I put on some surgical gloves that I had not yet made into fifi’s and grabbed some more freezer bags. The single freezer bag didn’t seem to be up to the task of sealing in the smell. Maybe one of you can write ZipLock a letter about this. I opened the backpack and was hit with beautiful bouquet of garbage juice and feces. As I pulled out my precious I saw something amazing! When I had first put the freezer bag into the backpack, each individual turd was defined and distinct like rings on a tree trunk. Some turds were big, some turds were small, some were brown, some were black, some were white, some were dry, and some molded to my hand when I picked them up. Now, all of the turds had come together and united to create a single, super, turd that was surprisingly moist. The colors had changed as well to a dark green and brown camouflage. The smell was so horrific I knew I had to get rid of this bag soon. I didn’t want to just toss my precious in the garbage though, because at this point I felt like I had created something glorious. I should have submitted it as my fourth grade science project.

One night, I was having problems sleeping because the people across the street and one house over were having a party with a live band. The band had been playing since the sun went down and at around one in the morning I decided it was time for everyone to go home. I went into the garage, grabbed my precious and went across the street of the house. I had decided I was going to become a literal “party pooper”. The backyard of the house has a seven foot wall so you can’t see in or out. I carefully take the bag out of the pack and start opening all three bags one, by stinky one. As each bag opens the smell became exponentially worse. I tear the sides of the bag until it was a flat piece of plastic. This was the first time in six months the main bag had been opened and I try not to vomit. I can’t even describe what it smelled like so just imagine if you took the smell of every corpse that has ever died in the history of the world, concentrated it, put it in a freezer bag then sealed it with a fart.

I pick up a side of the bag in each hand and thought “I shouldn’t do this” then start running towards the wall. I stop a few feet away, wind up and with all my might I chuck the bag as far and as high as I could. Since I had thrown it from my side it started spinning as it took flight. I could see it coming apart in the air and I started running up the street as fast as this sweet boys legs could take me. As soon as it cleared the wall I heard it hit something and the music stopped immediately like it was a movie. The only thing it needed was the sound of a record scratching as the needle came off the turn table.

The backyard was completely full so it most likely hit multiple people. The fact that it hit as soon as it went over the wall means one lucky person might have gotten a new hat and or scarf. This is forward fashion in all its glory. Much to my surprise this seemed to cause violent anger to the people at the party. I started hearing expletives as people were hopping over the wall chasing me. I was already at the end of the block by then running into the apartment complex. I hop the wall to my side yard, go into my room, take off my clothes and get into bed as quickly as possible.
My mom comes into my room a few minutes later and tells me there are cops at the house across the street. She asks me if I want to go over to see what’s going on and I respectfully decline while acting groggy. A few minutes later she comes back and tells me that some kid threw a bag of precious over the wall into the backyard hitting a bunch of people. She then says something along the lines of “I can’t believe some of the shit kids do nowadays”. I agreed with her then went to sleep. I never told her that was me.
I know this is a horrible story. If I told you about my life growing up you would understand why I was such a little shit head.

/JLHumor/

Christmas 1996. My family was rather poor. My dad was in graduate school making virtually no money off the stipend from his teaching fellowship, and my mom was a lowly government employee working 60+ hours a week just to make ends meet. We spent Christmas at my grandparents' house. Now, in our house, the nice Christmas presents were from my parents, whereas things like matchbox cars and slinkies were from Santa. This was not the case with my grandparents. They were really into the idea of mid-20th century Santa, who brought all of the best toys.

My grandparents were/are not wealthy by any means, but they haven't had to worry about money since the 1960s. Now I don't really know if this was the result of some wrapping paper error or if my grandfather had some grand design on how Christmas morning was "supposed" to go (neither would be surprising), but something happened that Christmas, and I will forever be blamed for it. You see, 1996 was when the Nintendo 64 was released in America, and for Christmas that year, that is what Santa brought my siblings and I.

We were all quite young. My sister, the oldest, was 8 and had not quite given up on believing in Santa. It was supposed to be the best present Santa Claus had ever bought us. But then things got messy. Because you see, we did not open the N64 right away. It was strategically positioned to be one of the last presents we opened. And several presents before the N64, I opened a present for me from my grandparents. Keep in mind that the present was definitely labeled as such. (I am sure of this because it has been my one point of self-defense for the past 20 years and was able to present the evidence at the relevant time.) This present was Super Mario 64. I opened it, expressed ample excitement, and then realized "Wait a minute. We don't have a Nintendo 64 to play this on."

I raised this point immediately, and was told that we could figure out what to do later. My sister and brother received Wave Race 64 and Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey, respectively, also from my grandparents. At this point I knew something was up and was trying to figure it out. I reiterated that we didn't have an N64 until my grandfather finally said "Yeah you do. You opened it earlier." But this was not the case. I protested and began closely examining the piles of presents until I was able to prove that we had not opened an N64.

Finally, we got to the last present, which was, of course, the N64. It was labeled "To the kids, From Santa.* (Again, I was able to present this evidence at the time to defend myself. I was 5, by the way. Way too young to become a pariah, in my opinion, but I digress.) The initial excitement overwhelmed my desire to interrogate the fishy goings on under the Christmas tree.

It was later, while we were eating Christmas dinner, which is really a late lunch and should be regarded as such, that I made the mistake that my family will insist on reminding me of until either I die or they do: I asked my grandfather, "How did you know that Santa brought us an N64?" In his defense, he very reasonably answered that he had been in communication with Santa Claus in the weeks leading up to Christmas. But I kept prying.

It took about an hour of me being told to stop questioning my grandfather, then being threatened with grounding, then being threatened to have the N64 taken away before he snapped and revealed to me the truth. My brother was young enough to be tricked into forgetting the whole thing and was able to spend a few more years believing until his elaborate plans to trap and kill Santa scared my parents into telling him the truth. (He had seen the movie The Santa Clause and wanted to become the new Santa.)

But for my sister and I, that was the end of Santa. It was also the last Christmas we spent at my grandparents' house until we were all adults. They came to visit us instead. There is a 100% chance that this story will be retold from another perspective in a couple weeks after my nieces and nephews have gone to bed, and I will be there to offer my defense as I have done so regularly for the past 20 years.
Most embarrassing: tried to reenact the scene in ET where ET hides among the stuffed animals while I was at K Mart with my mom, ended up cutting my knee on the metal shelving, had to get a tetanus shot. But hey, that's just K Mart for you.

[redacted]

Worst or dumbest? Cause I think mine's a combo of both. Stole mail when I was 8. Started with a Nintendo Power magazine, after that I figured all mail could be that cool. My friend Charles & I would just snag a bunch of random mail on the way home, open it looking for something cool then move on.
One day we found a check for $160 and thought we hit it rich. We walked for about a half hour to the bank to cash it. My friend Charles said, "Go cash it, I'll be over here" and went to a kids table in the lobby.

I walk up to the teller and say "My parents told me to cash this..." and handed her the "check."
She looks at the "check."

She looks back at me. And then back at the "check" and says "...this is a water bill from the city."
I said the first thing that came to my head which was, "Well, I don't know about that, but my parents told me to cash it."

She called her supervisor and showed him and he just looked at me with this "WTF is wrong with you?" face and handed it back to me saying they cant cash a bill.
Charles & I head out, back to his house, defeated. I thought "Wow, this day can't get any worse..." aaaaand then the cop car rolled up slowly.

We ended up getting put in the back of the cop car. I lived right down the way from where we got picked up, so I was brought home first. The way my dad told it, my step mom told him a cop was out front, when they saw me run full speed towards the door, after the cop let me out, trying to explain my side of the story before the cop could say anything.
It didn't work.

Worst part was, it was my neighbor's water bill. After participating in a summer of complete lockdown by my dad (like with a regimented routine of shit to do every day) he took me to the neighbors to apologize. The wife was really sweet saying "Ohhh it's ok! We all make mistakes." but the husband was a real hard ass about it, basically lecturing me about the whys and hows of slippery slopes and all that... I was terrified to walk by their house from that moment on.

HOWEVER, apparently they both really weren't upset, but my dad came over and asked them to really lay into me about it. I found this out years later and cant help but laugh about it because after that I realized why it seemed so forced.

2 lessons I learned from this though were: Don't steal mail. If you do steal mail, then try to cash a water bill, don't be black. Cause I got off with a warning and my friend Charles got 50 hours community service... at age 8.

/NumberJ5/

A small bit of backstory so that you can understand it a bit better. When I was younger (about 10-12 I think) I lived in a two story house. In the bottom story to the side of the house was a connected old tool house that had been stripped and converted into a bit of a cubbyhouse. it was a state of the art clubhouse for the neighbor kids and I. It had a front door which lead to the front yard (A large wooden door that opened both ways! oh technology!) and a smaller hidden door that was a moving fake bookshelf so I could sneak out the back into the back yard! (spoiled I know!)
Ok enough back story lets get to why I am here. I had a friend who lived across the road from me, he had a younger sister (she was 2 years younger than him) and him and I were best friends. One day him and I were playing tennis in the front yard (really it was more like over sized ping pong, with a line on my driveway as the middle marker) when he came up with the idea to make it 'interesting' instead of using a tennis ball we used a rock and instead of bouncing it we just had to keep it up.

Sounds like HEAPS of fun yeah? well it was, until he got over zealous and power hit it into his dads car breaking the rear window. Game over for him I thought, until his dad came outside and started yelling at us! Suddenly before I knew it I was being thrown under the buss by (lets call him Bob) Bob. He blamed me and being the Beta I was I took it.

I was grounded by my parents for 3 weeks and he would always rub it in and make fun of me when he went by my window. Well young me had a plan. A evil diabolical plan to get back at Bob for destroying my school holiday! I took the eggs in the fridge and I hid them downstairs in my clubhouse. and let them sit there for a few days in the heat (even been to Australia? Sometimes I am surprised they didn't hard boil in the humidity)

After I was happy with the eggsperiment I went over to Bobs house and suggested a prank on his sister (she was always being mean to him and I when we played the Nintendo at his place) he came over and we mixed the eggs in a plastic bowl. They smelled so bad, rotten just terrible egg smell. I almost didn't want to go through with it based on smell alone, but I stuck to the plan.

Now what I left out was that I told him to get the bowl from his place, I also got him to throw out the egg container at his place when he went to go get his sister to show her an "amazing drawing on the chalkboard in the clubhouse"

Him and his sister returned (now lets call his sister Tina) Tina had long golden hair that she always looked after. the plan was that when he walked in the door, he would close it after he walked in as a bit of a joke to her. then we would slip the bowl on top of the door and when she opened it the eggs would fall on her head. Everything went off without a hitch and Tina ran away screaming and crying that her hair was ruined. Sure enough his dad came across the road, furious about what had happened to his daughter. Straight away he goes to blame me 'the little shit that ruined his cars window'

Without missing a beat Bob throws me under the bus again. But this time I was ready Bob... I threw on the water works and turned it back onto Bob. Saying that I came downstairs to mess around on my chalkboard and Bob was in there with the eggs and a bowl. Pointed out it was their bowl and said Bob threw the box away at his place. The Dad suspicious at first looked at the bowl and knew it was his. he quietly apologized to me and asked me to go get my parents. He told them he was sorry for the mess his son made in the club house and that he would clean it up. (My plan was working!)

Bob and him went back across the street to find the egg carton in the bin. Bob was grounded for months and he never threw me under the bus ever again. His sister had to cut her hair to get rid of the egg smell. Fortunately for her she liked her hair short and kept it that way for the rest of the time I lived there. I moved away about 2 years later and never saw him again. But I will never forget getting that revenge on Bob and the Karma that was coming to Tina.

/Zomgrofll/

Geez, do you want the list, the book, or the multi-volume encyclopedia? I'm going to say that out of everything, the very WORST thing was try to benefit off of the death of one of the third grade teachers at my elementary school. She was not my teacher but a lot of my classmates were acquainted with her and I knew a lot of people who had her as a teacher.

In the middle of the school year she lost her years-long fight with cancer and of course, her students and the students in the other classes that she worked with were absolutely devastated. She was a longtime teacher at the school and the entire school was holding memorial in her honor.

Being the piece of shit that I was, I was just happy to be rid of her because she had the optic NERVE to tell me to shut the fuck up and listen to directions for once in my life and also to stop bullying her students.

And also because I held the stupidest grudge on her because she took me down off the top row of the stage during the Christmas concert and placed me in the middle row. I thought this was the biggest fucking deal in the world and so when I found out she died, I smiled and said, "Yep, she finally kicked the bucket!" Looking back on it, that's a creepy as fuck reaction for a 9-year-old to have.
It gets worse because on the one-year anniversary of her death, word got passed around that they were having a TV spot for students who knew this teacher personally--either her own students, or students who had a personal connection with her. They were to share their stories on how they knew her and what she meant to them, and would get to appear on TV for it. 

All I gave a shit about was that it would be on TV, and so I decided that I HAD to take part in this despite only ever interacting with this teacher once or twice and hating her guts for stupid reasons even then.

I put my name down on the sheet and when asked "Well, how did YOU know Mrs. B personally? You were never in her class, and she never worked with you, did she?"
I said, "Yes she did. She helped me with my math once."
My only personal interaction with this woman was that she showed me how to finish one or two multiplication problems once. That's all. I had the audacity to try to weasel my way into a TV spot memorializing her death based on this alone, when I didn't even like the woman and had been a disrespectful little fuckstick to her both in life and in death. 

That being said, they crossed my name off that sheet of paper immediately.

/novaonthespectrum/

I really hated my autistic older brother when I was a kid. I just didn't understand why every day he threw a tantrum and didn't want to play with me. The earliest memory I have of him is him chasing me out of the kiddie pool, and then me running off into the front yard, crying my eyes out. I just didn't understand, so I picked on him a lot. I would freak him out with his phobias, which were vacuum cleaners and other things. I remember going into his room with a vacuum cleaner one time.
But I just didn't get it I guess. I didn't get much attention when I was a kid and I really resented him for that. I didn't understand why he got to be with the speech therapist twice a week, I thought she was just some cool lady who went and played with him. So I remember one time I went in there, screaming and shit and then ran back out. I don't even know.

The main reason for my anger towards him was because I never had a normal brother, or a normal family. All my friends could play with their older brother and such. I just wanted a brother and he didn't want ANYTHING to do with me, all we did was fight. I mean, I knew he was autistic, but I still didn't get it when I was a kid. I was really jealous of my cousin who was my age, who had older siblings. There was just a lot of irrational anger towards him that I acquired throughout the years, stemming from family and brother issues.

So I'd say the worst thing I ever did as a kid is tied between two incidents. One time when I was about 8, I was waiting to go somewhere cool with my parents. My brother was on the couch in the living room, waiting to go somewhere with his aide(some lady paid by the state to basically babysit and teach him how to socialize). I was playing with a gary the snail happy meal toy. I still don't remember what happened, but he did something which just made me snap. I took the toy and viciously beat him over the head with it until he bled. There was blood on the carpet. I remember having to clean it up because my grandmother was visting that day too. Boy did I feel like shit.

The other time I was like 13 or something, and I was on a cruise with my family. God knows why, but my parents put me and my brother in a cabin, despite our failed history of family vacations due to our fights. So things are going well on the cruise, no hostility between me and my brother, until one night we're both in bed and I want to change the channel. My brother had been watching this one show for a long-ass time and I politely asked if I could change the channel.

Him being stubborn as hell refused, and it escalated into a HUUUUUUGE fight. I'm talking HUGE. I don't remember what happened in-between, but I remember my brother storming out into my parent's cabin. I had a bad feeling so I went after him, and he tried to jump off the balcony into the water, yelling all this really sad shit like how no one understands him, no one loves him, I want to die, etc. I don't know how but I pulled him off the balcony before he could do anything. I don't really know what else to say.

I really do love him though and we don't fight at all anymore, he actually saved my life when I was a baby. I was in the living room alone and I found a chocolate bar, and shoved the whole thing into my mouth, foil and all. My brother, who couldn't talk at all, ran into the kitchen and said the word baby. My parents ran out to find me jumping up and down on the couch, REALLY close to choking on foil.
You know it's actually really sad. No one is probably going to read this but I guess it's good to get it out. I've actually stopped him from killing himself twice, the second time a couple weeks ago actually. He got in a fight with my mom about something and ran off into the woods. My mom didn't do shit, she just stood there and came inside crying. I put pants on but when I got out into the field he was fucking GONE, I had no idea where to go. 

The terrible thought of train tracks loomed on me and I sprinted my ass all the way to the end of the woods to find him in some dense shrubbery and I pulled him out. We had a heart to heart about why and such, and he said he was on his way to the tracks so he could get hit by a train. My family is fucked up, sorry I'm going to stop talking now.

/denonsteve/

I was 14-15 when I taught myself how to drive. My mom had an early 00's Beetle, manual transmission, that I would practice with. I would pretend to go to sleep, then sneak out of my window at night and take the car out for about an hour or 2 just around the neighborhood. This went on for a few weeks.
Now, one of my best friends at the time was the adopted child of this guy who ran an oil and transmission business. He owned his own shop and would have cars in his shop yard for sometimes a week at a time. He would bring home his clients' keys for safe keeping, or so he thought.

My best friend, "Daniel", brought up the idea to meet at the shop one night and we would have our pick of the cars. So he pocketed the keys to the cars, and the keys to the shop yard. We met up and had the thrill of our lives. We did the same thing as I did with my mom's car, then go back and lock up, and go home to sleep. This went on for several weeks. The gentle cruising turned into learning how to drift, the cars were actually terrible but we were living up the "drive it like you stole it" mantra.

We turned this into our normal thing. He also had a foster brother, "Ben", at the time that started getting involved. One night all three of us piled into this little old 80's beater something-or-other and dropped Daniel off at his girlfriends house for some late night hanky panky while me and Ben went out for the joyride. We were to meet him back at 3am to all get home. That night, it didn't happen.

It was my turn at the wheel and we were having fun in our usual neighborhood with a great road. A 4 lane 50mph road (with no traffic at that time of night) that led into a really nice 'S' curve with a bit of a down slope that was great for throwing out the back end. A bit overzealous, I hit it at about 75-80 and the tail went waayyy out right and I lost it, then way left. Skidding sideways I put my driver door into a stop sign at about 50-60 mph.

We rolled 3 times and (thankfully) landed wheels down. Dazed as fuck we gathered our wits and saw we were in the front yard of the corner house. I realized my door wouldn't open as it was smashed to hell and back. My window was still there so I leaned over Ben and kicked it out. We were both dazed but ok as we crawled out of the driver window and booked it into the dirt wash that ran behind the neighborhood.

We were freaked the fuck out and at our nearest points to each others houses we split ways. Through the desert that divided neighborhoods were our quest. About 5 minutes after we split I see it, the police car with it's spot light scanning my area, just about 30 yards away. I hit the dirt and ducked behind a bush, it went right over my head as another car showed up and they stood talking and scanning together. I was just the other side of a slight hill dividing us so I decided I needed to stay moving. I military crawled it for what felt a football field's length before the cars had gone from sight and I got up and booked it the rest of the 20 minute journey home.

I swear I expected to show up home with my front yard riddled with cops. I didn't... but I did show up to the lights in the house on. What time is it?! It was nearly 4:30 am and my mom was up getting ready for work. That night I hadn't left my window open as I had gone out the back door. That was my way in. I took off my clothes down to my underwear and stashed them on the patio. If I ran into my mom at least it looked like I was up from bed.

She was in the kitchen making coffee, I was in the laundry room. I needed to pass the kitchen to get to my room. I watch her from hiding as she went off towards her bedroom and I ran to my bedroom and tucked myself in. SO. MUCH. ADRENALINE. 10 minutes later she comes into my room and gives me her 'leaving to work kiss'. I pretend to be asleep.

/Shucks88/

I broke my younger sister's arm. I was six at the time, and she was about a year and a half old, maybe a touch younger. Definitely over a year. I found out that if I picked her up and dropped her on the bed, she liked it. So I did it a bunch of times, then she started crying, so I stopped, because she obviously didn't like it anymore. Man, I thought, babies are weird.
The crying continued. The fracture wasn't obvious and I didn't mention when she'd started crying, so the next day, my mom took her to the doctor. The doctor found an ear infection, gave my mom antibiotics, and sent her home. 

That night, my mom noticed my sister's arm was swollen while she was giving her a bath, but it didn't look broken, and she was alone with two kids at night (my dad was on his usual Friday night "business trip to Peoria" so it's not like he was home) and was exhausted , so she figured she'd take her first thing in the morning.

Dad got home in the morning (from his probable affair; my folks didn't divorce until my sis was going off to college) and freaked out, and everyone was off to the ER. I still didn't spill, the incident not really connecting to the current situation in my brain.

My parents were then suspected of child abuse and spent a good amount of time at the hospital being separately questioned. My mom pulled out the prescription, as if to say, look, I took her to the doctor!

See, it was a hairline fracture. And my sister wasn't really verbal yet, and she'd been having a series of painful ear infections, which meant both that everyone assumed that was the problem and that my mom hadn't really been getting any sleep (because my sister wasn't sleeping the night, and it wasn't like my dad was going to handle that shit) and so wasn't at the top of her game.

I didn't confess for like a month. Also, the cast kept her up at night. Then she got measles (despite being vaccinated; shit like this is why antivaxers piss me off). Then three days after she got her cast off, she ran into a cabinet at day care and had to get stitches above her eye.

Then she got a really bad case of the chickenpox (this was pre-vaccine). Also, pneumonia was in there somewhere. She didn't sleep through the night till she was four. My mom was, in her own words, about to jump off a bridge.

This was all shit luck. My mom was a responsible parent-all vaccinations on time, proper nutrition, always there, etc. My dad sucked, but she made up for it. Broke my sister's arm, got my parents suspected of child abuse, contributed to my mom's near madness.

/darkassin/

I have done many things in my primary school that should have gotten me expelled but I was a sneaky kid and never got even suspended. It was a middle school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

It is a really big school with everything from kindergarten to university and was also very strict with places we could and couldn't go with suspensions and expelling depending on where you went and what you did. Here are the worst ones of which I can remember.
Around 4th grade, me and 2 friends got into a art room that was being renovated and destroyed pretty much around $500+ in equipment. About 10 wax bags, some clay bags, a whole whiteboard, and other sorts of equipment. The art room never opened and we were never discovered for doing the damage.
I think this 1 was around 7th grade. Got into my teachers room before a test and managed to get the teacher's copy of it and saw all the answers. Of course I got 100% on the test.
again in 7th grade. Me and my buddies, again, go into the university building right next to our school at lunch time. We go up to a floor that was in the middle of renovation and start playing hide and seek. I remember there were some walls missing in the floor that we could easily have fallen off the building.
again in the university building with my 2 friends. This time in 5th-6th grade. We go to the computer lab and start playing games in the computer. Might not seem as a big deal but it was a 2 week suspension if caught in the university building.
After 7th grade there is a really high fence between the school and the university, so my adventures there ended.
we went a few times to the kindergarten part of the school where we did a lot of crazy things and almost killed a turtle once. Remember my school is very strict about going to these different parts of the school.
this is the last one and lasted through my entire middle school times. Would go into the cafeteria/food shop and always steal a handful of jelly beans. Only things I ever stole in my life. Totally worth it.
/v1p3r0903/

I almost killed my 3 year old brother. The last house we lived in before our parents divorced had a basement that flooded every time it rained.
The first time this happened Dad hooked something up and we had a garden hose running through the backyard, draining off the stagnant water. I grew up at the end of the "drinking water from the hose, go out all day on your bike with no parent" era so, when my brother and I were outside and he got thirsty, I told him to drink from the hose.

He drank and Dad came outside at the same time and I got a major fussing at. He was fine that night but over the next few days, he was rushed to the ER more times than I can count. He'd run 105°F/106°F and then it would break and go back down. He began hallucinating that he was covered with moths and would scream bloody murder for hours.

I had no clue what was going on, I thought he was faking. But when mom told me he could die, I just cried and cried and cried. My little brother has ALWAYS been my baby. Turns out he had E.coli and something else. He was sick for a very long time but, thankfully, suffered no lasting trauma.
Oddly enough, when I got pregnant with my first son I got an extremely serious bacterial infection in one of my kidneys and had E.coli present in my blood. (Obviously I wasn't drinking hose water lol)

It completely shut down my right kidney, almost killed us, and put me through 10 surgeries over the course of the last 3 months of my pregnancy because it caused urine to back up into my body.

Me and my unborn ran at about 104°F for a few excruciatingly painful days. My blood felt like it was on fire and, with my entire body covered with ice, I felt like it was peak summer inside the hospital.

I ended up having a tube inserted into my kidney that connected to an external bag for urine/blood/pus/sediment to run in to--had to wear it from the time I got sick until my son was delivered.

It was absolute hell. Thankfully I was hospitalized at the peak of my sickness but...fuck, dude. I have never felt worse about what I did to my brother, accident or not.

/Dragon--Aerie/

When I was a young lad of 5 I decided it would be a great idea to move my mothers car farther up the driveway. (I do not remember the reasoning I had for this but it was a really "good" reason.)
My parents were both taking a nap after a long day; It was mothers day which was a friend of theirs sons birthday so his parents had a get together for the kids and adults. I saw my mother had parked really low in the driveway and I thought "Well maybe it would be a great mothers day gift to move her car for her." -Me probably. So I sneak into my house snag the keys from my moms purse to her car (1996 Jeep Cherokee) and slowly move out of the house and into the drivers seat.

I get in and look around; Like I said, I was 5, So I can't see over the dash unless I sit up really tall but then I can't reach the peddles. (See where this logistical disaster's going?) Alright, I get in and go through my pre-drive check: I put my seat-belt on, I get my mirror's checked, I move the seat as far forward as possible.

Now I get the key and start the car, works like a charm. However, If you have ever driven a car before you will know you need to have your foot on the break before you move out of park right? I don't honest know how I managed to even move into gear But I do!

(Oh great) I'm holding the break and attempting to look over the dash. When I realize that's not going to happen. I then figure I can just look out the side window at the house and use the tree to know how far I am from the garage door. So I ease off the break and start to roll backwards (Not really sure why I didn't think of that my driveway was really steep.)

Anyway I panic and slam on the break, as you do as a 5 year old driving a car for the first time. I think about it for what seemed like minutes then just decide to hit the gas hard enough to get up the steep incline.

(Sounds like a plan) I quickly let off the break and punch it! Annnnnd, Nothing happens. I keep rolling backwards. I can hear the engine, so its not that. hmmm, Ill try it again. Nothing. I decide it was not enough I go harder this time. I have my foot on the floor,(not paying any attention to the windows at this point) Still nothing...

(Shit) Then after a few moments of trying *** BOOM *** I crash into a tree across the street next to my neighbors driveway... I later realized my error was that I was in Neutral. My parents came out to see their son in the drivers seat of the car crying trying to spit out that I was trying to re-park the car.

My mom was furious, my dad was too but he was also trying not to laugh at the ridiculousness of this whole thing. I had wrecked the rear bumper and broke the window in the back. My mom still gives me shit for this to this day.

/NewAndAwesome/

I've had this saved in a document ready to share it for a while. I am not proud of this moment but here it is in school i was a bit of a psychopath I conducted an experiment on two girls back in school, yes I am an absolute cunt but i've changed now.
The girls were twins, this was lucky as them being twins meant they had the same background, same genes e.t.c., and thus from my point of few would have the same taste in guys. At the time i was average looking medium build. They were average looking girls quite petite with ginger hair.

The first girl (Girl 1) I treat like shit i found out they were german so I called her a Nazi called her ginger purposefully ignored her bar in any classes we shared.

The second girl (Girl 2) I treat like a charmed admirer telling her she looked good today complimenting her hair saying how her accent is pretty great. Basically the complete and total opposite of girl 1.

Can you see why i'm not proud of this... So I did this for an entire year Girl 1 hadn't said anything about the way i was treating her Girl 2 told me that i was nice to her e.t.c and how much of a great friend i was.

After about 5 months one of my friends sat me down and told me the girl 2 had approached him and told him that i was being a bit weird towards her and that i needed to know she only liked me as a friend. I let him in on what i was doing and i lost a friend but he promised not to say anything to either of the girls.

I carried on regardless of girl 2's feelings towards me and continued being nice. I even stepped it up a notch and told her that i'd love to go out with her sometime. She told me that it would never happen and called me a freak and thus I lost Girl 2 in my experiment. I continued the same attitude towards Girl 1 it had become almost second nature now at the end of the 8th month i was approached by girl 2.

She apologised for turning me down but told me it was because girl 1 had feelings for me. By the end of the week Girl 1 approached me and told me that she had feelings for me and wanted to know if i think we should go out sometime. I said "nope" and my experiment was completed. I made a journal of my findings that i have hidden in my first house that my parents rent out. If i find it i will photocopy every page, theres 2 books worth, and upload them to reddit.

As a side note Girl 1 is now very happy with a guy who loves her unconditionally. Girl 2 has just completed university with honors and i've met up with both of them to apologise and confess to what i did as per my counselling sessions. So as a personal social experiment I treat two twins In opposite ways to see how they react to me and was lucky i didn't scar them for life.

/A-Horrible-Human/

Well, I guess I did realize how bad this was at the time, but here goes anyway.. When we were about 12 years old, we used to hang out at this old abandoned factory that the fire department used to use as a training facility. They would lit it on fire and then put it out. It was a huge complex with a single tall tower on the highest of two roofs.
So we're hanging out there one night ( remember we were going to a school dance and we went to the factory early to drink light beer and smoke ciggaretts ), and we had a friend with us that hadn't been there before.

Anyway, we are up on the tallest roof, with fucking holes in it everywhere from all the fires, you could look down into the factory and it would be something like 25-30 meters down, so a pretty nasty fall if you didn't know where the holes were.

On top of this roof stands this 15-20 meter tall tower, on wich on the other side had a huge cement balcony with a view out over the sea. We used to hang out there all the time, but that shit was scary.

You had to climb one of thoose tall ladders with the metal rings around it to prevent you from falling. After the ladder came this 1 m2 iron bar balcony thing before you entered the tower. Well, I'm gonna show my friend who hadn't been there before how to get up there, and up the ladder I go...

When i get to the iron balcony and set my foot down on it, I see the screws holding the balcony just fall out of the wall, and the balcony plumage. I yell out to my friends standing directly below it to get the fuck out of it's way, and all but one reacts fast enough.

Instead he looks up, and get the whole fucking thing right in his head, it had turned slightly in the air so he got the sharp-as-fuck corner where all sides where welded together right on the top of his head. He got knocked out, and he just started to fucking spew blood from his head everywhere, I mean this was some tarantino-amount of blood loss.

My other friend ripped of his shirt and tried to stop the bleeding while the rest uf us ran like crazy to the nearest houses ( before cellphones) and just started to knock on doors like crazy and yelling that someone needed to call an ambulance..

He lived, but it was close, he lost a-fucking-lot of blood and was hospitalized for more than a month. Never blamed me though.. Almost killed my friend with an iron balcony.

/M00nfac3/

Went to a Catholic high school in the days when you could still get the cane (in fact my last year was the year it was banned, go figure).

Our English teacher had to leave the room for a while and we got bored, so a friend and I decided that we needed to have a paper plane competition, since we were on the 3rd floor.
As a bit of background - Catholic schools in Australia are audited and given funds by the (then named) CEO, Catholic Education Office, and every so often a CEO inspector would come along and check up on things with the principal.

So Mick & I make our planes, I make a basic dart while Mick makes a glider. We head to the windows and throw. Mine heads straight over the other buildings and flies like a bullet over the playground. Mick's on the other hand flies out then gracefully arcs around slowly heading towards the ground in ever decreasing circles.

I looks like it's heading into the building via an open set of doors, when BAM it hits someone in the head that is just walking out the doors.

We all leapt back to our seats and pretend nothing has happened because we saw a flash of the Headmistress, a nun we called Sister Smiley (because, you know, she was never smiling). Within 2 minutes our teacher burst into the room looking like he was going to burst a blood vessel.

He threatened the entire class with detention unless the plane throwers owned up, which Mick and I eventually did (no-one narced to their credit).

Down to the principals office we went for 6 of the best on each hand. Only found out afterwards that the person Mick's plane hit was the CEO inspector (right in the eye too, lucky it was a glider) and we had jeapordised our schools funding. Even after the cane we were still threatened with expulsion.

We found mine in the playground, about 300m away so I was definitely the winner of the distance contest, just not the elegance contest. I'm still quite proud of the way that Mick's plane flew, you couldn't ask for better.

I was 15 and mowing the back yard, which was overrun with weeds because I hadn't done my one and only chore for weeks. I was still sullen about it and was pushing around the gas-powered machine angrily. I had a little dog named Chaser who was on her lead at the far end of the yard because the loud mower scared her.
I saw the lead in the grass and, thinking the mower wouldn't catch it, I decided to "scare" the dog by "pretending" to mow her lead. The dog had no idea of the potential consequences, but I did. Even with that horrible knowledge, however, I proceeded to mow over the lead. It caught.

The blades would occasionally whirl a half or full turn as I tried desperately to loosen the rope or get at her collar. The neighbor was out in his yard at the time of the incident and had hopped over the fence, came over and turned off the lawn mower. At the exact same moment my mother came out the back door and saw Chaser mangled under the lawn mower and me covered in blood.

She somehow wrenched the dog from her bonds and rushed into the house, with blood literally spurting out of the dog. She took her to the sink, turned on very cold water and put her head under.
I screamed "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! YOU'LL DROWN HER!!"

"Exactly!" said my mother. "She's almost dead anyway, no reason for her to suffer." Incredibly, the dog, who had been stiff as a board in complete shock, started to cough and sputter under the water. I grabbed the dog and hauled her out, which spilled the dog, my mother and myself onto the floor.

Immediately, the dog started to yelp like hell and her face was a horrific mess of bone-deep slashes and blood everywhere. I called 911 and asked for the Animal Hospital or Emergency and the operator disdainfully said "There is no such thing - this is for emergencies ONLY!" and hung up.

I screamed at my mother "WE HAVE TO GO TO THE VET!!!" and grabbed Chaser and ran for the car. The dog was screaming and fighting me the whole way. I tried to hole her snout to keep the blood from spraying out.

She lived, but died of an infection 6 months later. Likely brought on by the incident. I have never forgiven myself.

/a_calder/

When I was in 7th grade my friend and I were bored and thought it would be fun to light some shit on fire (great idea right?) so we grab a lighter and a pale of water and head into the woods next to her house. At first, we just lit a few leaves and sticks on fire and watched them fizzle out. We then decided to light a pile of leaves on fire.
Bad idea. At this point in the year (in New England) the ground was completely covered in dry leaves. 

The fire started growing into a large circle as we tried to stomp it out and poured the last of our water onto it. Nothing. It kept growing.

My friend then grabs the bucket, runs to her pond (conveniently about a hundred feet away), and starts relaying water to the fire, back and forth. At that point, we were shitting our pants not knowing what to do.

I finally convince her we need to tell someone but she's too scared to tell her parents. I run to the house and find her dad chillin in the garage.

Too afraid to say anything, I just tug on his shirt and point to the nearby woods where smoke is billowing out above the trees. He exclaims a very wide-eyed "WTF" and then proceeds to call 911.

Fast forward ten minutes (ten LONGEST minutes of my life) and the fire dept. arrives and soon puts out the fire. It burned nearly an acre of land and was about 100 yards from reaching a nearby house (oops).

So I'm sure you're wondering what kind of trouble we got in.. well, needless to say I was never allowed back at that friend's house. The police department made us write apology letters to the house we nearly burnt down and the fire department.

We then had to write an essay about fire safety and present it to the police chief (who my parents happened to be friends with) ..quite embarrassing, especially since we were like 12 or 13, definitely old enough to know not to play with fire. Yeah, I accidentally burnt down an acre of woods in 7th grade

[redacated]

As a child I took great pleasure in fucking with people, my younger sister was frequently the target of my devious scary deeds.
One night she was baby sitting my younger brother with her childhood best friend, my parents were out to a dinner party a block or two away. I knew they would be home alone in advance and that she was under the impression I had plans. This was in the 90's before most people had cellphones.....

I planned ahead... left a window open in the basement earlier that day, took a TV remote that worked on most of our TVs', some tools, several cheapo walkie talkies, one of the cordless phones from the set and the family video camera.

First I began playing with the volume on the television while they were watching a film, next my friends and I snuck into the basement and unplugged the phone line that went into the box that connected it to the pole.

We began to continue to mess with their movie watching from outside by changing the input and mucking with the volume controls. This began to bore us after a while so we took the cordless phone and used the page button to call the others. In a scary voice we began telling them what they were doing, where they were in the house, how we were going to get them, etc.

At this point they really began to freak out and went upstairs and locked themselves in a bedroom. Using the video cameras crappy night vision function we continued to provide descriptive information as to what they were doing and they began to get more and more frightened, most especially because they could not make any phone calls.

Last we snuck into the house again and began shutting off all the circuits on the breakers until the whole house was pitch black, we rapped on the walls and made noises creeping up stairs and banging about.

We could hear the two of them crying scared out of their minds, just as we got to the bedroom door they were hiding in, I heard a car pull into the driveway.I ran as fast as I could back down to the basement and shut the breakers back on and plugged the phone line in, left what I had taken and snuck out of the house.

It came ou t that my friends and I were the ones that tormented my sister and her friend, the funny thing is I don't recall ever getting in trouble

[redacted]

i did lots of bad stuff, i was socially award in a way that i didnt give a fuck if people liked me or not, kinda the opposite of the norm (it eventually reversed and then went back to not giving a shit only if i dont like them)
At recess during the pokemon card craze i went inside to "go to the bathroom" and walked into coat rooms stealing all the good pokemon cards, and i didnt steal all of them at once, just 3-4 at a time all from different people, i think i did this like 20 times, muahahahaha
This kid was even more screwed up socially than i was, a complete momas boy who was desperate to fit in but acted stuck up for some reason. anyway i went into his backpack, stole his housekeys and gave them to the class bullies, they fucked around with them and threw them into a pond but made sure that through word of mouth that he knew they were stolen... then slowly over the next few weeks fucked with the kid by convincing him i was on his side and was doing an investigation into the theft.
Made up evidence causing him to go around accusing people and getting his parents involved, they accused the wrong person before deciding that this kid lost the keys and was lying to cover it up, and by this time the "cool" kids who he had accused made sure everyone completely isolated him. he just went into a corner and cried for like three days after the climax because his parents grounded him and no one would talk to him at recess. I found it all hilarious.
I grew up in a suburban development that was being constructed one area at a time, so lots of construction sites. One day me and my friend stumbled onto a JUST installed rainwater pipe (also called a manhole), basically it was just a huge hole in the ground with the cement pipe sticking up in the middle with the metal lid. so we got a 2x4 and made it into a bridge so we could reach the pipe, and then used a metal rod to pry open the metal lid (manhole cover)... inside was pitch black with a built in ladder leading down about 10 feet into the pipe, with the very bottom filled with water.
i convinced my friend to climb down the the ladder and touch the water to prove how brave he was, and the second his feet tapped the water i put the metal lid back on the pipe and left... he wasnt strong enough to lift the metal lid and was trapped for about 7 or 8 min until i decided to let him out...oh did i mention this was the day after we watched the Ring? (horror movie) he pissed himself and didnt talk to me for 2 days
convinced a different socially awkward kid to smash a bunch of decorative bricks that were to be used to construct a really expensive house, and then "went to check in with my parents"... the cops were called by some random passerby and i showed up just in time to see him running from them into the nearby forest, they didnt catch him but it was hilarious anyways
I have a bunch of other stories revolving around me manipulating people, maybe that means im fucked up but its always kinda funny at the time. Ill go into them if anyone wants but its already a wall of text
i used to love tricking people into doing stupid things and then watching them get into massive trouble

/Draconomicon/

My sister adored me when we were growing up. I was six years older than her; she was my permanent audience, and I was her permanent hero.
When she was four and I was ten, she got one of those hair-bead sets where you can string up some beads on a little wand, run a lock of hair through it, and pull all of the beads up onto the hair.

Add a rubber stopper at the bottom and boom, instant string of dangling '90s.

Anyway, she was incredibly excited by this and asked me to do it with her. I made a big show of having fun with it, and we did it as a little arts and crafts project together.

She made one, which I helped her put in her hair, and I made one, which also went on. She couldn't read at this point, and some of the beads were little individual letters, so I used my knowledge of language against her and integrated the words BUTT FACE into the otherwise pretty string of beads. She was so excited you guys, it was adorable.

My mom saw it later when my sister proudly said "look what Teague did!," beaming and happy. My mom told her what I had done, and my sister was devastated. Ultimate betrayal, crying, confused. It was seriously like when Sully roared near Boo and Boo thought Sully was roaring at her. That kind of thing.

As of now, I feel terrible for this. (She was so excited and proud and thought she looked so pretty. Ugh.)

It's okay, though, because a couple years later my sister somehow managed to lock me out in the snow in my underwear. Aside from that, I was not punished at all. But I deserved it. I deserved it hard.
Illiterate kid sister was excited about hair accessories, dickhead brother feigned kindness and wrote mean things in her hair, received no punishment, hates self. Epilogue: We're cool now.

/teaguechrystie/

Wanted to make my own wine. I dont recall how old i was, still in Primary School so I guess somewhere between 9 and 11. I got heaps of strawberries, grapes and blackberries and mushed them up and put them into an empty 2 litre bottle with a heap of sugar and i figured I'd check it out in a few weeks, give it a sniff and shake then leave it again until it smelt like wine.
Now, my parents had no idea, obviously, so i had to stash it somewhere. My mother's Audi broke down and she got a new vehicle and they decided to sell the Audi for parts and until it was sold, it was to sit out of the way at the top of the drive next to the garage! Perfect place to stash the wine i thought.. and so I did.

The summer holidays were coming up and i went to stay with my grandmother in tbe village she stayed in and id forgotten about the wine.

I spent a month of my summer holidays away and came home to spend the last few weeks at home before school started again - the "wine" must have been in the car for over 2 months, maybe 3 by now and, uncommonly, it was a very warm summer in the Highlands of Scotland.

I was out in the garden, i believe we were having a barbeque, and while sitting around on the garden furniture there was an almighty BANG that came from the other side of the garage. My stepdad runs over like "Wtf!?!?

He got to the old Audi and the inside of the Windshield was plastered in a dark red/brown liquid. We ran over to see after hearing him shout my mother over.

He opened the door of the car as we arrived and the smell was overpowering. It was like wine but so much stronger. The inside of front of the car was covered in the same red/brown goo.

The seats, dash, steering wheel and part of the roof.. It was just a mess.. goo and seeds everywhere.

It didn't take long for them to work out it was me and not my brother who was a year younger.. nor was it my 2 infant sisters. I probably had a guilty look on my face. My steo father found it hilarious. My mother was furious.

/AndlisOriville/

Growing up in China, it is typical to live in the same apartment with ones grandparents. So while my parents worked my grandparents would take me to elementary school and the such.

Now everyday after school, my grandpa would give me a bowl of boiled milk. If any of you has ever boiled milk before, you'll know that it creates a layer of "skin" on the top of the milk.
This really didn't bother me much when I first started drinking milk, but as the years went on, it got more and more disgusting to me. It went to the point that I was so repulsed I couldn't even drink the warm milk. Now the problem is that if I tell my grandparents, they'll just tell me to suck it up and force me to drink it. 

So what do I do? Naturally, I dump the entirety of this bowl of foul hot skinned milk into this gigantic bag that sits on the shelf behind our dining table.

This became a regular occurrence for me as I didn't get caught, and once I dump it out, it was out of sight out of mind! I went on my merry little Asian way doing this for the next 2 fucking years. Until one fateful day, I found out my parents is planning on immigrating to Canada, and my mom is starting to prep for her TOFEL examination.

Unfortunately, ALL of her English studying books that she got over the years previously was stored in the same bag I've been dumping my liquid mortal enemy in. So when she went to grab the bag from the shelf, it was only an illusion of a bag, but in reality, it was a milk-soaked home base to probably hundreds of fucking cockroaches.

The bag split open, and if you ever seen one of those gifs of a mother spider carrying its young and they all suddenly scatter, this is exactly what that fucking looked like. Except it was hundreds of fucking tiny cockroaches scattering across our floor.

My mom was too shocked to even yell at me, staring at her ruined English books that is the home base to a colony of tiny soul crushing bastards. I was standing there stunned, realizing the fact that I had been the king roach to a colony of royal subjects, who I nurtured over the years by providing them with disgusting warm milk.

I think that was one of the few times that I actually did not get a whopping for doing something so stupid and ridiculous.

/Zomgrofll/

Decades ago I backed up a kid when he told a lie. Details: I was about 12 years old. Every day I had to walk a long block and a half to catch my school bus. Another kid from my school, around 3 or 4 years younger than me, also waited on the same street corner for the same bus. His home was only a few houses up from the bus stop.
Me and this kid became acquainted while waiting for our school bus. Eventually it got to the point where he invited me over to his house to play. I was at that age where I was growing out of playing with toys and kids younger than me. I felt this kid was just a bit too young to hang out with. But I couldnt bring myself to turn down his invitation. 

I recall sitting in the kids bedroom, feeling awkward watching him play with his toys on the floor of his bedroom. But apparently the kid and his family took my presence as a playmate in stride. I wound up going over a few more times because I couldnt bring myself to say "no".

Anyways, when it came time to take the bus back home from school, it took about an hour before the bus reached my stop where me and the kid were to be dropped off. I hated this and wanted to get home much sooner. I discovered that if I walked home instead, it took only a half hour to get home from school. So unless the weather was too unbearable to walk in (rainstorms, freezing temps, too much snow on the sidewalks, etc), I walked home instead of taking the bus.

Somewhere along the line I told the kid how I walked home most times instead of taking the bus because I got home earlier this way. He decided that he wanted to walk with me instead of taking the bus. I shrugged my shoulders. I didnt care if this kid wanted to walk along with me. So we walked to his place where we played a bit. Afterwards, I went to leave this kids house for my own home. As we were standing out front, a young woman came to us.

She was hysterical and crying. Her daughter, even younger than the kid, was not on the bus that was supposed to take her home. As it turned out, this kid was tasked with the daily responsibility of seeing to it that the little girl got on our usual bus to be taken home.

I did NOT know this whatsoever. When the kid decided to walk home with me, he wasnt there to see to it that the girl got on our bus and as a result the little girl got on the wrong school bus.

The lady asked the kid if he saw her daughter on the bus and the kid lied through his teeth about not seeing her on the bus instead of telling her the truth about how he walked home instead of taking the bus. The lady looked towards me. I cannot recall my exact words to her except to say that I backed up the kids lie. I do not know WHY I did that. The lady went away distraught, and I went on my way home.

Eventually, the whole mess was sorted out. The lady was shortly reunited with her daughter, safe and sound. And the kids parents learned about the situation and the entire truth behind it. As a result, I was banned from playing with the kid as well as coming over their house. Which was a relief to me anyways.

/RussLawrence/

When I was about 13, a plump friend (relevant later) invited (thin) me to go with her mom to the Renaissance Festival, which was about a 45-minute drive out of town.
Keep in mind this was practically DURING the renaissance, long before anyone had cell phones.
We went, the mom let us explore on our own, and went to a tent selling skirts. They measured my friend first, wrapping a ribbon around her waist to give a color-coded size. I went next, and the (older) couple web on and on about how I was so tiny they didn't even have a size for me. My friend got mad and walked off.

I tried to find her for a few minutes, but I was mad. I hadn't done anything wrong! So I thought it would serve her right if I was "lost" for a while. I knew her mom had been going to the jousting, and certainly any shopkeeper could have directed me to some main booth to help us reconnect ... of course there were a hundred ways I could have found them again.

But instead, I wandered around a bit, purposely NOT doing any of those things, until I ran into some older girls I knew very vaguely from school. I explained my friend had walked off in a huff, and they offered to give me a ride home.

This made perfect sense to me. I clearly didn't think it through AT ALL, but had some vague idea that I'd return home and tell my parents how I'd been abandoned by my stupid friend and had tried valiantly to find her, but had failed and instead had found my own way home. But on the LONG ride home, I slowly started to realize how badly I'd fucked up. My not-a-plan did seem to depend on my getting home before my friend's family did.

And then the girls "had to" stop by the video rental store where some guy worked. And they chatted with him for what seemed like an hour--I'd guess it was a least 30 minutes, but it felt like an eternity to me. I MIGHT have even called my parents at that point, but whether I did or just went home is sort of irrelevant, since by that time I'd been "missing" for at least 3 hours.

Which doesn't sound like a lot, but what I hadn't thought about was that whenever my friend had realized she'd lost me, she would have found her mom, and after--what, 15 minutes of looking on their own?--would OF COURSE gotten the Renaissance Faire organizers involved, and when I still couldn't be found, had called the police.

And my parents. And I still, even with the organizers and police involved, was still nowhere to be found, at an event 45 minutes from home (and I should note that we were in suburban America--my having taken a bus or taxi home was as likely as my having flown).
So I arrived home, found out about the havoc and worry I'd caused, and found that my parents were not convinced by my claim that I'd been the wronged party. This HORRIFIES me now as a parent...

/Zai_shanghai/

I was 7 and my brother was 9, at the time we lived in Managua, Nicaragua. My mother worked for the Red Cross so we travelled around, and she did even more, going on expeditions to different Latin American countries. This story happened on one of those times where she was away. Our Babysitter was 24 years old, and was our spanish teacher.

It was the year after 9/11, and we lived 500m from the american embassy. We started messing around (We being my brother, the babysitter and me), we sent love letters from one neighbour to another declaring love or challenging them to a duel, petty pranks.
But after a while the babysitter suggested we sent a letter to the American Embassy, threatening them that if they didn't leave one million USD at the cemetery 1KM up the road, we would blow up their ambassador. dumb right? but, being 7 and 9, we were in no place to say no, we figured "He's native, he's older, he knows best.".

He said it was a common joke among Nicaraguans and it was never taken seriously. So we wrote the letter, and walked to the embassy, where upon my brother and the babysitter chickening out and saying "you post it." "No you!" I made up my mind, grabbed the letter with my 7 year old sausage fingers, and posted it under the gate. We then cantered off 50m up the road, and hid behind palm trees.

I, thinking I would be masterful and disguise myself, removed my denim jacket, and stuffed it under my shirt. "Now they'll have seen a skinny kid in a denim jacket, and here's a fat kid with a black Tee. Not the same person"

Smooth A truck with 4 marines in the back pulled up pointed guns at us and arrested us, took us back to the grass outside the embassy and tried to put handcuffs on us all, but my brother's wrists and my wrists were too small, so they were gonna tie our hands up with our laces, but we both had velcro.

So they just left us, and after 2 hours of crying and shouting and intimidation, we were taken to the police station, and interrogated. They made us write a bit and compared our writing to the writing in the letter. They then let us go, and the babysitter spent 10 days in a Nicaraguan Jail and can never go to the US.

There were newspaper people outside, and tried to photograph us as we reversed out of the police station, but we were lying on the floor of the car.
Anyway, we made front page news, but our names were distorted into extreme arabic names (we're 3/8 Hungarian 2/8 lebanese 2/8 english and 1/8 spanish so we have strangely arabic/eastern european names.

/Upheave/

I was around the age of 6 and it was summer. My family and I were at my grandmothers house in Knoxville. Far into the woods was a three level home I spent a great deal of time building beautiful memories. My sister and I would play with toys from the 50's my grandmother saved. They might have been old but I still enjoyed them. You had to be creative with blocks, tinker toys and original log cabin logs. When you had an older sister payback had to be creative too.
Now I don't recall what it was my sister did but aside from tag, got-cha-last and other forms of games that involved running away, things wouldn't escalate too far. My guess is that she had something I wanted and wouldn't share or had pushed me out of a room. I'm not going to speculate much but whatever it was it struck a cord with me. Something deep inside me that boiled to a head. 

I was conceived that I would do something she would never forget and pay dearly for. In what I can only assume was a blind rage I marched down with a steady foot, mashing my foot prints into the stiff bristle carpet. As I swung around the banister and walked past my grandmother, mother and aunts clucking on about life I put on my innocent face and made my way to the kitchen.

In the late afternoon with lights off to conceal my activity, I climbed atop the counter next to the oven and opened up the baking section of my grandmothers cabinets and grabbed a fist full of tiny wooden sticks I had seen her thrust into various sweets and cakes. These are my tools. This is what I will construct with. This is how I will enact my revenge. Anyone familiar with a Burmese tiger pit knows how this will end up.

I wish I had. Palming the toothpicks I made my way back to find a suitable location to ensnare my sister. As I climbed the mountain of carpet covered stairs on all fours the search came to an end half way up the stairwell. I drove the small spears deep into the carpet pointed heavenward. Here I will nimbly make my escape after taunting her as a lure.

Sure enough I drew her out and quick in chase I made the corner descending down to my trap with her closely in tow. Now I should note that even at a early age I have always suffered from ADD. I forget things often and when challenged with a task it takes all my effort to stay on point. You have not mastered this art at the age of 6. I still have not at near 30.

Just as you would expect the trap worked well. Too well. In my haste to get away from the grasp of my sister so close behind me, I came down that stairwell with a heavy heel.

They crashed into each step with the force of the Giant coming down on Jack and as I sunk my foot down onto the top of that toothpick my memory sharpened. I remembered that the bigger danger was not my sister behind me, but my own evil hands below me.
I didn't get into any real trouble for obvious reasons. My mother gave me a good verbal thrashing but I think she knew I had learned any lesson I was going to learn after pulling the wooden shards from my heels with pliers.

/Catch_22_/

I posted this story in another thread about childhood, but I think it applies even more perfectly here.
I enjoyed devloping intricate psychological experiments and performing them on my brother. When he was four I convinced him that there was a monster that lived in the toilet that fed on people with his name and only people with his name when they slept.

The only way to avoid being eaten by this monster was to feed it a sacrifice once a week. My brother really liked action figures, so naturally I selected them as the sacrifice. Once a week for nearly two months he would flush an action figure down the toilet.

He was legitimately frightened of the monster in the toilet; he hardly slept the entire time, and he came up with hilarious excuses to get my father to buy more action figures in case he ran out.

One day my dad noticed a large water stain on our ceiling. The toilet on the second floor was overflowing and flooding the bathroom. We had to call a plumber, and he came back to my dad with a bucket full of shit covered actionfigures and a gigantic bill.

When my dad confronted me about it, I told him that my brother had been flushing the action figures down the toilet for the last few weeks. I made sure not to say anything untrue, but at the same time not to implicate myself.

My brother didn't understand that I'd set him up at this point either, and when my dad went to talk to him he started bawling. He told my dad that he was afraid to die. Since the plumber had taken back all of his action figure sacrifices, he was sure the toilet monster was going to kill him that night.

It didn't take long for my dad to figure out that I was responsible, but he had a hard time convincing my brother that I was lying to him. My brother tried several times in the ensuing weeks to flush more action figures down the toilet, but I knew I would take all the heat if he did, so I prevented him whenever I could.

He eventually got over his terror, but it is still my favorite example of brotherly psychological torture. But I got my brother to sacrifice action figures to a toilet monster that he thought was going to kill him.

/FaceF18/

I have lots. I was cluelessly naughty. All of these here happened before the age of six, around 1985. Once upon a time I was a young child at church. As a child, perhaps you remember, we stand much closer to the ground and our vision has a lower focus than adults. This day, I was standing around while my parents talked (BORING) and a tiny green circle of plastic caught my eye. I picked it up and turned it all around in my hands. Finally, I bent it in half and it broke. It was useless to me then, so I threw the two pieces across the carpet and turned my attention elsewhere.

Suddenly, there was a cry out near me. "Oh! I've lost my contact!" I didn't know what a contact was, as my parents both wore glasses like normal 1-income people. I wanted to help though, as I was a kind child. "What is that? What does it look like?" You know what the answer was, of course. "It's a tiny green circle of plastic.... so expensive....I can't lose it.....I can't see out of that eye..." I felt like such a fraud, "helping with the search." Yeah, they didn't find it. This is the first time I've ever told anyone what happened, three decades later.
Another time, I was playing with my friend from down the street, Amy. Amy was a year older than me but we loved to play together. On this day, we decided we needed to do some art. Lord only knows where my parents were. My dad worked third shift and slept in the basement, but my mother's sewing room was down there as well, so either one could have been in charge, but they had to be down there or outside for this to occur. 

My mother dabbled in art, and one of her supplies was a shelf full of tubs of powdered tempera paint. You just had to mix it with water and boom, presto, PAINT. ("Tempera paint is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble bindermedium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk)" - Wikipedia).

Well, from what I recall and have been told, Amy and I mixed up several jars of paint and decorated the entire dining room table (standing on carpet), then left it in all its glory and went to Amy's. My parents still shudder, telling that story.
Another story that they shudder over and now I as a parent cringe at, is the time I sold flowers. Now, this was in the heart of Des Moines, Iowa. I lived on a street that was parallel to I-235, maybe 100-200 feet away. (Rollins for anyone needing precise maps) Now there's a massive wall structure between the freeway and homes, but back then it was just a chain link fence. I was attending Hubbell Elementary for first grade (I skipped kindergarten so I was still very young), but it was across the freeway and we had to use an enclosed walking bridge and then cross a very busy street with a crossing guard to get there. 

One weekend day, Amy and I got an entrepreneurial bug. We walked all over the neighborhood, picking flowers from yards, gardens, telephone poles with climbing vines, etc. Then we crossed the bridge and went door to door selling them, "for five or ten cents, whatever you want." We made a pocketful of change, then went to the nearest gas station.

The attendant helped us count out the money and we miraculously had enough for a soda and candy bar each (Bless you dude, you made our day). Amy and I carefully crossed the busy street on our own (who even needs crossing guards?) and went to the Hubbell playground to revel in our grownup behavior. And play, obvs.

After we were finally tired and bored, we walked home. As you can imagine parents might be after their six year old was missing for hours next to I-235 in Des Moines, mine were out of their minds with worry. For some reason I got spanked, grounded, and wasn't allowed to hang out with Amy for quite a while.

/mamajt/

When I was in the first grade at my local elementary school I decided to have a little game with some classmates (I believe there was four of us) of mine. For some reason we decided (I think it was my idea) to show each other our genitalia. Keep in mind there were two girls who were in our "group."

As our game gets underway my friend whom we will call Bob is scheduled to go first but chickened out and refused to to play. Me trying to be the hero without thinking unzipped my pants and showed the group my junk.

Instantaneously a red headed girl in our group screeched and my teacher rushes over and sees what is going on. She immediately told me to go to the principals office and wait there while she tried to console the red-headed girl.

As I waited I distinctively remember feeling that I did nothing wrong. I had no idea the harm I had caused. Eventually, the principal was informed but she did not say a single word to me. Instead, she called my parents to come pick me up from school while I waited in the office lobby. I can't remember the discipline from my parents but I don't think it was too harsh based on the fact that I don't remember it.

In middle school and high school I would always see the red-headed girl around but thank goodness we never talked or anything because nobody ever mentioned the event to me after that. Quite frankly, I feel I would have been proud of it anyways :P
That's my story as a kid but here is a little extra. Anyways fast forward to five years later when I'm in the sixth grade we move houses and what do you know? We move across the street from my principal. Anyways nothing else concurred for the duration of my stay at that elementary school. To be honest I feel as if I had forgotten about the entire event.

Since I didn't get suspended or anything of that nature I didn't think it was a big deal. Anyhow, my neighbors are quite friendly and outgoing and have get-togethers (is that a word?) while drinking and eating dinner. I'm a junior in high school now and one night, the get-together is scheduled to be at my house and I'm just in my room playing video games to avoid being social.

Before dinner was served, my mom comes into my room and advises me to go get food before all of our neighbors helped themselves and ate it all. I was hungry so I obliged and pranced down the stairs so that I could return to my video games. While making myself a plate my principal who looked like she had been drinking quite a bit notices me and strikes up conversation with me.

After chatting for a bit about what I've been up to recently she blurts out "Do you remember in the first grade when you tried to get the red-headed girl to have sex with you?" Not wanting to explain myself I just ignored it and went on my way putting my back towards the room with a dozen hysterically laughing drunk adults behind me.

/ryballa/