YouthfulExuberance

Comrades and I participated in some stupid activities as young teenagers, as witness a pair of our more idiotic schemes:

• storm sewer spelunking --- A manhole cover near the street in front of our house could, with difficulty, be lifted to access the tunnels that carried rainwater away to a local creek. These pipes were, barely, large enough to crawl through. So of course, we did ... never thinking about hazards such as animals, floods, sharp objects, or simply getting stuck. No way to turn around for 20 meters or so, until one arrived at an underground chamber (aka Secret Clubhouse #1!). Some Higher Power must have been on guard; no disaster struck during these expeditions. Eventually we came to our senses (or our shoulders grew too wide for comfort in the culverts) and we gave up wriggling through the concrete tubes.
• lock detonation --- My brother and I took a bunch of firecrackers apart, extracted the gunpowder, put it into a steel padlock through the slit where the key is normally inserted, and then proceeded to heat the outside of the lock with a propane torch. (Hmmm ... in retrospect, this doesn't sound like a smart thing to do, eh?) Instead of burning briskly and melting the innards of the lock, the whole mechanism exploded --- putting a chunk of shrapnel into my brother's leg and partially deafening me. We both recovered, eventually.

Don't try this at home, kids!

TopicPersonalHistory - Datetag20011116

(correlates: BabySteps, RuddyGore, RepoMan, ...)