Hellions

[moxie]

I was a very tame child/teenager. Raised in a single-parent home and knew for as long as I can remember that my mother didn't want me (had that verified when I turned 18 and flat out asked her). Quite often, I think about why in the hell did I not get in trouble at school, with the police, get pregnant, use drugs or any of that other "hellion" stuff because I had no supervision or rules and was left alone for days at a time for years and years. I have yet to come up with an answer.

My mother is very conservative and the way I disobeyed was through my appearance, in hopes to embarrass/shame her in the community in which she was well-known. I wore nothing but black, dyed my red hair every color under the sun, had "punk" haircuts and would go through a white can of Aqua Net (remember the old aerosol haze that would linger in a room? ) in less than a week. She hated all of it and I loved it.

[cara]

I was pretty tame as a youngster, too. Had I not been in a choir with very strict "dress code," I would probably have acted out a little more with the hair and facial piercings, etc. 9th-11th grade was the grunge phase for me. 12th grade was the hippie/granola phase, which didn't exactly wear off. However, not being able to actively rebel did make me sneakier. For instance, my parents didn't notice for about a year that I had pierced my ears numerous times in the 8th grade.

[dixie]

Originally Posted by Gemme

Actually, I was quite the lovely child.

Except for the glasses.

I got my first pair at 14 months old. My second about 2 weeks after that. The next a couple of months after that.

Do you see a pattern here?

One pair I distinctly remember flushing. Another went out the window of our two story apartment, into the thorny bushes. Another I gave to the dog to chew. Yet another "somehow" "accidentally" got stomped/sat/stepped on (4-5 pair like that, actually). Even more got tossed out the moving car, "losted" lots of times, and run over by the car.

Now that I pay for them myself...and have gotten used to the buggers...they tend to stick around much longer than those did.

I still don't like things on my face though.

I didn't get my first pair of glasses until 5th grade because my parents thought I only wanted them to "look cool". wtf? They finally got tired of replacing them every few months (thank you dodgeball) so they let me get contacts in 10th grade...lol

[dixie]

I should also mention that at least while I was out being a hellion and doing zero homework, somehow I still ended up honor roll with offers for full scholarships. Which I turned down. (As a 31 year old current college student, I would like to time travel back and kick my 17 year old ass...LOL)

[chefhottie25]

I was such a trouble maker in my younger years. The incident that brought me the most fame in high school...I put alka seltzers in a salt water fish tank in my biology class. Bubbles were everywhere and the entire class found it amusing. My teacher did not...she called my parents that night to tell them about it and all of my other class clown antics. I was promptly grounded.

[little_ms_sunshyne]

I was for sure a trouble maker...Where do I even start?

Had my first beer when I was in the 3RD GRADE! I will never forget it..beer in one hand and a little miss singing mermaid in the other!

We dissected a cat in Anatomy and Physiology...I took it upon myself to put the parts in my teacher's locker. The next morning she had an interesting greeting lol

I was the only kid in highschool with nipple rings and a tattoo! lol

I wont even tell you what happened in "church camp" within the "forest of prayer"! Lets just say, it was a little heavenly....lol

My dad was a holy roller for a while and my mother rarely says a curse word let alone does anything else not considered "ladylike".

I am surprised they still love me lol Anyhow, now no one would ever believe that I was a troublemaker.

[Venus007]

A story from my miss spent youth. . .

My sister and I would take the bus to school then hoof it to the south shore train or if we were broke we would hitch hike to Chicago, fool around for the day then hitch hike or take the train back and ride the bus home.

We loved flirting with those nice sailors in their beautiful uniforms around Great Lakes Naval Base

oh it is a wonder she and I are still alive today

[1PlayfulFemme]

I was a good girl....

And when I wasn't, I knew how to not get caught

[Apocalipstic]

I taught the other kids how to play Blackjack on the church bus

[Starbuck]

When I was a kid, I was such a pyromaniac it wasn't funny! My brother and I once set a large bush in the neighbor's yard on fire. That bush was right next to our detatched, wooden garage and the fire ended up burning part of the wall.

Anyway, large billowing, white puffs of smoke went up into the air causing a neighbor two houses down to come to our back gate to ask us if we had a fire going and thankfully by that time we had used 2-liter bottles of water from our swimming pool to put out the fire, so we told the truth and said, "no", LOL...those were the days.

[deb_U_taunt]

Made my sister eat some berries, because we were told they are poison. She didn't even get sick.

Cracked another sister's head open with a brick. She paid me back by breaking my arm.

Stole a FEW cars here and there.

Shoplifting paid for smokes and drugs.

Broke out of the girl's school, twice, they wouldn't take me back after that for some reason.

Threw a coke in a teacher's face.

They didn't even have to ask my name, when bringing me into Juvey by the time I was 14. I got a welcome back.

This doesn't even scratch the surface,

Had it all out of my system by 23.

[Turtle]

...starting at age four, I asked Rusty to go to the park with me to feed the ducks...with no parental units. Rusty's mom found us and left me there

When I was about 7, I walked off from day camp and decided to go play at the school down the street...just cuz.

In jr. high my favorite activity was running out of school when there was snow, going to the park and makin a pile of snowballs for when the school buses drove by...they always had OPEN windows...needless to say, I had a good arm...

I was always throwing or shooting something - spitballs, firecrackers, eggs...

Good thing I finally cut that shit out...and when my troublemaker son used to say, "And don't tell me you never did anything"...I would say, "Yeah, but I never got caught!"

[RockOn]

When I was three, tried to flush a home made dress pattern down my great grandmothers toilet. When it did not go down after a few flushes, I poked my hand in there and pushed on it as much as I could. They already had straight pins in them and had been cut out. I heard them coming to find out where I was and hid. They retrieved the pattern from the john. My grandmother and great grandmother were always selecting patterns and making prissy dresses for me from the time I was three years old until around seven. I purely hated those dresses or any dress for that matter. Seems to me they would have caught on much sooner ... because of the incident in the bathroom. I remember these dresses always involved outer lace covering and it was so scratchy under my arms - not that I would have liked them anyway.

At five years old, promised my mom if she would buy me the cowboy outfit I wanted for Halloween, then I would play with the doll she insisted on buying for me. Not sure if that one was the Chatty Kathy or the one that peed on itself and needed its diapers changed. At any rate, I tore its head off ... accidentally.

[Rockinonahigh]

Fast horses,faster hot rods, jack daniels and hot women..need I say more.

[JAGG]

wow I could write a book I think . hahah When I have a little more free time, I will amuse, the easily amused, with my misadventures .

[Apocalipstic]

I made out heavily in the prayer room!

[Cin]

I’m not sure what was wrong with me but for a good portion of my life I seemed rather clueless and unconcerned about the fragility of human life, especially in regards to my own. As a kid I wasn’t so much a hellion as I was an absent-minded possessor of exceedingly poor judgment. An early indicator of my lack of comprehension concerning the importance of protecting one’s person from harm was my love of playing chicken. Chicken was the name of any game where you either did something really stupid for a longer period of time or something dangerous more dangerously than the other idiots playing with you. I started around 5 and it was a game I always seemed to win, if indeed one could call the end results of many of these endeavors winning.

A minimally popular game I invented, called of course chicken, (don’t worry, what I lacked in imagination I made up for in dimness) when I was around 9 was to take shopping carts from the grocery store and race them down hills. The idea was to push the cart down a sloping, low volume side street, pick up speed, jump in and ride it toward a busy street into oncoming traffic, jumping back out at the last possible second hopefully knocking the cart over in the process so as to avoid it or you getting hit by a car. The object was to go faster than the other guy while also coming as close as you possibly could without actually getting hit by a car. How it usually turned out was whoever had the nerve to stay riding the longest won. I was pretty good at it. And I only lost a couple of carts and once got chased down the street by an irate driver. The guy seemed positively spastic because he had almost hit me with his car, yet was hell bent on getting his hands on me, seemingly with the sole purpose of doing me bodily harm. A puzzler that.

My mother’s favorite (and I use the term loosely) story was the time I got thrown off the Round-up at the amusement park. I met this kid at the park and he was telling me how he could do tricks on the Round-up. He could kneel on the chain and stuff like that. So we went on together and he started doing his tricks and I remember thinking hell, why not bypass this chain stuff all together. I told him let’s walk around. We can start slow and just go from standing station to standing station and then try to walk around the ride. I still remember how hard it was to fight the centrifugal force. Pulling away from the wall was like breaking suction. Walking was really a struggle. Then all of sudden I heard the sound of the hydraulic fluid releasing and the ride got horizontal, slowed down and stopped. I remember thinking that was a short ride, maybe somebody got sick. Then I noticed the ride operator. He was all red in the face and screaming at me to get off. Everyone else was told to stay on. The guy was apoplectic. There was spittle flying from his mouth as he hollered for me to never ever come back on any ride he was operating again. I remember being quite surprised at his reaction. I had no idea my doing a few tricks was going to cause such a problem. As I left the ride, I looked over at the crowd and saw my mother’s horrified face. Shit, where did she come from, I remembered thinking. Then I noticed my father standing next to her and he didn’t look so much horrified as he did very, very pissed. We both moved at the same. He came for me and I ran like hell through the park, over the fence surrounding the merry-go-round, and out the gate. Not sure where I thought I was going. I was only eleven, too young to get an apartment and support myself.

It took me years to figure out what all the fuss was about. I thought people just over reacted to my liking a rush every now and again. Initially, adrenaline was my drug of choice.

[Talon]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

I’m not sure what was wrong with me but for a good portion of my life I seemed rather clueless and unconcerned about the fragility of human life, especially in regards to my own. As a kid I wasn’t so much a hellion as I was an absent-minded possessor of exceedingly poor judgment. An early indicator of my lack of comprehension concerning the importance of protecting one’s person from harm was my love of playing chicken. Chicken was the name of any game where you either did something really stupid for a longer period of time or something dangerous more dangerously than the other idiots playing with you. I started around 5 and it was a game I always seemed to win, if indeed one could call the end results of many of these endeavors winning.

A minimally popular game I invented, called of course chicken, (don’t worry, what I lacked in imagination I made up for in dimness) when I was around 9 was to take shopping carts from the grocery store and race them down hills. The idea was to push the cart down a sloping, low volume side street, pick up speed, jump in and ride it toward a busy street into oncoming traffic, jumping back out at the last possible second hopefully knocking the cart over in the process so as to avoid it or you getting hit by a car. The object was to go faster than the other guy while also coming as close as you possibly could without actually getting hit by a car. How it usually turned out was whoever had the nerve to stay riding the longest won. I was pretty good at it. And I only lost a couple of carts and once got chased down the street by an irate driver. The guy seemed positively spastic because he had almost hit me with his car, yet was hell bent on getting his hands on me, seemingly with the sole purpose of doing me bodily harm. A puzzler that.

My mother’s favorite (and I use the term loosely) story was the time I got thrown off the Round-up at the amusement park. I met this kid at the park and he was telling me how he could do tricks on the Round-up. He could kneel on the chain and stuff like that. So we went on together and he started doing his tricks and I remember thinking hell, why not bypass this chain stuff all together. I told him let’s walk around. We can start slow and just go from standing station to standing station and then try to walk around the ride. I still remember how hard it was to fight the centrifugal force. Pulling away from the wall was like breaking suction. Walking was really a struggle. Then all of sudden I heard the sound of the hydraulic fluid releasing and the ride got horizontal, slowed down and stopped. I remember thinking that was a short ride, maybe somebody got sick. Then I noticed the ride operator. He was all red in the face and screaming at me to get off. Everyone else was told to stay on. The guy was apoplectic. There was spittle flying from his mouth as he hollered for me to never ever come back on any ride he was operating again. I remember being quite surprised at his reaction. I had no idea my doing a few tricks was going to cause such a problem. As I left the ride, I looked over at the crowd and saw my mother’s horrified face. Shit, where did she come from, I remembered thinking. Then I noticed my father standing next to her and he didn’t look so much horrified as he did very, very pissed. We both moved at the same. He came for me and I ran like hell through the park, over the fence surrounding the merry-go-round, and out the gate. Not sure where I thought I was going. I was only eleven, too young to get an apartment and support myself.

It took me years to figure out what all the fuss was about. I thought people just over reacted to my liking a rush every now and again. Initially, adrenaline was my drug of choice.

*chuckle*....This is great!

[deb_U_taunt]

I still have burn scars from playing chicken with cigarettes.

We had a shopping cart track, too. My mom had enough, when my cousin opened up his head on a curb though. lol

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Chicken was the name of any game where you either did something really stupid for a longer period of time or something dangerous more dangerously than the other idiots playing with you.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Debby

I still have burn scars from playing chicken with cigarettes.

We had a shopping cart track, too. My mom had enough, when my cousin opened up his head on a curb though. lol

Ya, played that, forearm to forearm, loser moves first.

I thought I invented that shopping cart into oncoming traffic game. Probably kids all over with access to shopping carts, hills and plenty of traffic figure out how to put it all together for a delightful mixture of fun and near death experiences.

And I’m pretty positive my mother would have been quite upset to see me careening into on coming traffic atop a shopping cart. It is an activity I’m sure she would have strongly discouraged had she learned of it.

A fun game we often played in North park was “BWANNA”. I came from a place devoid of creativity. Our parks had uninspired names like North Park, South Park, the East End Park and in the Italian section, Columbus Park, perhaps this contributed to my lack of imagination. Anyway at least this game wasn’t named chicken. The rules were simple, one guy was “BWANNA” and he or she had a stick and would chase everyone else until he/she hit one other person with the stick, once you were hit with the stick you found a stick of your own and began chasing people trying to whack them and so on and so on until everyone but one person had a stick. That poor schmuck was the winner and then everyone chased him or her with their sticks, ran the guy down and beat him/her enthusiastically, yelling “BWANNA”. It was always a bittersweet victory. After turning 13, some of us from the old neighborhood would still play this game but we took acid or mescaline first. It added a dimension.

Ah, good times, good times.