Childhood Pranks

[Johnny Footstool]

The teenage kids in my neighborhood went a little crazy a couple of weeks ago. At 3 AM on trash day, they took everyone's trash cans and used them to set up barricades at both ends of the street. They also swiped some garden hoses and strung them through the trees. One of them found a tractor sprinkler and tossed it out in front of an oncoming car. Unfortunately for them, it was a police car. It did some serious damage, and the kid got into big trouble.

I talked to some of my neighbors about it, and they kept wondering, "Why would kids do something like that?" I just kind of shrugged. "Because they're kids. They don't have reasons. They think it will be fun."

I think most of us went through that phase. My friends and I did some goofy stuff like that when we were 15. We used to climb onto the roof of our schools, get in through an unlocked maintenance door, and wreak some havoc (just petty stuff -- no broken windows or anything like that). One night we got into all three schools in my hometown -- the elementary school, junior high, and high school.

I read on another thread that woy took some lady's dry cleaning out of her car and hung each outfit on a different tree in the neighborhood. Classic.

What did YOU do?

[westofyou]

In 8th grade a bunch of us made a dummy out of some clothes and went all over the Village (Mariemont) at night and laid it in the road and watched people pull up to it and get out of their car and go and check the "body"

No one took it, no one ran over it, no one did anything but get back in their car and move on down the road.

We thought we were a gas.

[timmario66]

On Senior day at school, we moved one of our most clueless teacher's entire classroom to the auditorium stage where we were having presentations the next day. She took it all in good fun.

We could have done a lot more but a few classes before us did some real damage and they had janitors on 24 hour watch.

[Roy Tucker]

My best friend had an apple orchard. We found that if you put a rotten smooshy apple on the end of a long stick, you could fling that sucker 300 ft. or more. So we'd bombard cars on the local roads. It was quite the calculation to time the speed of the car and fling the apple in a high parabola and have the apple and car intersect.

Throwing snowballs at cars was always great fun. Throwing snowballs and insults at angry drivers that decided to chase us was even more fun.

We'd also go find flagpoles with gold balls on the top, shimmy up the pole, and steal the gold balls. Why? I don't know. One kid slid down the pole too quickly and got hung on the rope lanyard by a very tender part of his anatomy. We had to lift him off. None of us stuck around to see how he explained why he had to go to the ER. His folks didn't let him hang with us after that.

And anyone that owned a VW Bug or other small car was fair game for us to pick up the car and move it to very odd places. Like patios, between other cars, houses, etc.

The trouble got to be that, even though we never got caught, everyone pretty well knew who the kids in the neighborhood were that were capable for such things. So we got blamed for a lot of stuff we didn't do.

[RedsBaron]

So we'd bombard cars on the local roads. It was quite the calculation to time the speed of the car and fling the apple in a high parabola and have the apple and car intersect.

Throwing snowballs at cars was always great fun. Throwing snowballs and insults at angry drivers that decided to chase us was even more fun.

So we got blamed for a lot of stuff we didn't do.

We never used rotten apples, but in my early teen years my friends and I were quite talented in the use of tomatoes, water balloons and snowballs to bomb passing cars. We were often chased by the police and by passing motorists. One friend once felt the wrath of some Wayne High football players who were in a car we hit, while the rest of us kept running.
One time one of my friends disappeared from the rest of our merry band, as we waited above a roadway to unleash our projectiles onto vehicles below. Suddenly, as a car neared, the road burst into flames. My friend had gone to the road itself and poured a strip of gasoline across the asphalt. As the car got close, he lit the gasoline, causing the car to drive through the flames. We admonished our friend, fearing that his antics might do real damage or even cause a crash. The next time we went out, he again disappeared. The next thing we knew, a passing bus was being raced up the road by flames. This time my firebug friend had poured gasoline along the white strip at the edge of the road, and we got to watch the flames race beside the bus as it went on towards Wayne.
Our last outing was when I was 15. On Halloween night, just as the final member of our crew that night arrived (we were down to only 5 guys at the start of the evening, about half our usual number), another gang bombarded a police car, which came roaring towards us, lights ablaze and sirens flashing. We hadn't done anything (yet), but we were also five teenagers, armed with illegal fireworks and other guilty-looking items, so we had to flee into the woods, with the police in hot (and extended) pursuit.
After we made our escape, we then traveled on the road on which I lived. We were down to 4 guys, as one of our band had happened to meet a girl, and decided to depart with her for more intimate activites.
We found a "jack-o-lantern" pumpkin, that had been on our front porch, smashed into the road. We picked it up, deciding that it could be of use. We then continued our travels, and were inspired to spread brush and tree limbs across the road, so we would block the school bus which we normally rode when it tried to make its run the next morning.
We finally reached another rural community. We started looking for the mailbox of "Hop" Fields, with the intention of stuffing the pumpkin in his mailbox. What we did not know at the time was that the other gang, the one that had previously bombed the police car, had already been through that community, bombing houses with rocks. The community was waiting, and they thought that WE were THAT gang.
We suddenly heard "Hop's" deep voice: "Come down here boys!" Without a word, we all instantly ran, going back down the same road, the only way out of that community, nestled in a narrow valley. Shots rang out, not in the air, but directly at us, with bullets whizzing by us. Lights were coming on in the community, and at least one other person came out onto his front porch, armed with his revolver.
Oh, those tree limbs and the brush we had put in the road?--it now barred our path, but we plowed through it, as it scratched and cut us. Meanwhile, neighboring dogs joined into the fun, giving chase.
No one had a stopwatch, but I conservatively estimate I was reeling off 100 yard dash times, one after the other, in the sub-8 second range.
We finally made our escape. For some reason, we didn't venture out like that again. Two members of our gang are now ministers and I'm a lawyer.

[RFS62]

Two members of our gang are now ministers and I'm a lawyer.

Wow, what a story.

Well, at least that explains it.

:

[SunDeck]

"Swimming around the neighborhood" - late night pool hopping.

House Bombing- pick a neighborhood house with aluminum siding and bomb it with apples at 3am.

Socking- When I was in 10th grade- filling up tube socks with flour and whacking unsuspecting freshmen with them.

Siphoning gas. I didn't do this (couldn't get it to work), but my neighbor did. He would siphon gas from one neighbor's car and deposit in another's. I think he got the idea from a movie. He did this for an entire summer.

[vaticanplum]

We used to go cow tipping.

I'm not kidding.

[BRM]

We used to go cow tipping.

I'm not kidding.

Yep. Snipe hunting was very popular as well.

[SunDeck]

We tried cow tipping at the Mount St. Joe farm in Delhi. Maybe we didn't read the prank manual, but I came closer to dying that night than I ever have again.

[vaticanplum]

We tried cow tipping at the Mount St. Joe farm in Delhi. Maybe we didn't read the prank manual, but I came closer to dying that night than I ever have again.

You have to get them at a very specific point is what I was taught. If they're too deeply asleep, they won't move and you could actually hurt them (and they're often down by that point anyway). If they're not deeply enough asleep, they can get...tetchy.

[WVRed]

Anything involving dry ice is cool.

Just sayin'.

[Roy Tucker]

Anything involving dry ice is cool.

Just sayin'.

Cherry bombs have water-proof fuses.

Just sayin'.

[Johnny Footstool]

Rearranging letters on signs was also a lot of fun. We came up with some hilariously vulgar phrases.

[creek14]

Back in high school we were big into TPing. All the parents went along with it, it was no big deal. All except one dad. He was a horses backside. He caught some of us TPing his house and made a big stink about it. Called the cops and insisted they take us to the station (even though the cops wanted to just send us home).

So anyway, one of the other kids lived on a horse farm. Since the guy had been a horses butt, we decided he should have some of the by-product. One night a bunch of us loaded up a big dump truck with some horse manure. The truck was then driven to the jerks (no I’m not still bitter, why do you ask??) house and the truck dumped in his driveway. Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

A couple weeks later we lobbed laundry detergent tablets into their pool.

And a couple other things I won’t mention cause I’m not sure about the statute of limitations…

Then there was the time an ex-boyfriend really really made me mad so I went and bought a bunch of um, adult reading material, subscribed and had it all sent to his work address.

I could go on…

Moral of the story – don’t tinkle off creek.