Worst Childhood Escapade?

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I thought while we're on the subject of childhood memories, some of you would share your worst escapade or two. Most of my childhood was simply spent escaping from the clutches of my mother who was forever trying, and failing, to turn her farm girl/tomboy into a ballerina/cheerleader type. One of my worst mishaps was when I was about 13. My friend and I had seen the movie Toby Tyler, and were suitably impressed by the horseback stunts he learned in the circus. (Standing on a running horse while it was circling around in a ring.) Toby had a safety harness he wore while he was learning. We decided a rope suspended from a tall tree would work as well. Which it probably would have had my horse not bolted and had we realized you are better off with square knots rather than slip knots. We did go on to later perfect many trick riding stunts but never did try that particular one again.

My dear MIL told me many stories about my dh when he was a child... this is my favorite. Dh grew up back in the 40's. His parents divorced when he was 6 and his mom had to work, so he was home alone on the farm a lot and too far out of town to have many friends. Subsequently he thought up his own entertainment, which often involved his passion, flying airplanes. At one point, he decided he would build his own plane. When dh gets an idea, he goes at things whole hog, so I'm not talking about a toy plane. He spent weeks out in the shop building a wood glider frame. Then covered it with his mother's bedsheets and painted the sheets. Finally, he dragged his glider across the road, across a field and up a huge sagebrush and rock covered hillside. Once he reached the top, he pushed his glider to the edge and off he sailed.....not far, but yes, he was really flying!! Of course, he learned early in life that flying was easy, it's landing the plane that's rough!

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), January 22, 2002

Answers

Worst escapades of childhood: I was trapped there.

-- mitch hearn (moopups@citlink.net), January 22, 2002.

I'm still thinking up new ones....

-- chuck in md (woah@mission4me.com), January 22, 2002.

We grew up on a rural farm my sister would spend days out side. Exploring the creek was one of our favorite spots in the summer cvatching crawdads and building dams etc. We were probably 9 and 7 at the time and we were discussing how people in the old days would wash their clothing in the creek and pound them on the rocks to get them clean. The next thing you know we were stripped down had our suits all layed out on the rocks and pounding them with other rocks really going to town on them giving them the labourous thorough cleaning we imagined the prairie women giving their clothing. When we tired of the laundry duties we went to put our swim suits back on the stretch fabric streched and the suits were covered with big dime and quarter sized holes everywhere. swimsuits were rather a novelty these being our only ones for the season. It was rather tricky getting back to the house and past mom unnoticed. I can't imagine what the cows must have thought us casually strolling through the barnyard as if everything was normal. I don't know what mom must have thought when she discovered the suits in the laundry but she never suspected us or if she did she never asked. needless to say shorts were our swimming attire the rest of the summer. Ronda

-- ronda (thejohnsons@localaccess.com), January 23, 2002.

Most of my childhood was spent climbing. The peach tree, pear tree (it was huge, I can't imagine how old it must be), the hay in the barn, the supports that held the barn walls up, the combine, even daddy's old round-fendered hay truck -- I climbed up on a fender one day, wrapped my legs around the turn indicator that stuck up from it and hung down with my back towards the wheel well. Got stuck there, too! Daddy had to come rescue me (after my yelling for about five minutes), and he of course had to stand there and laugh and tell me I got down there, I could get back up too! I didn't get into too much on the ground, I don't think! I even (I've been told repeatedly) dragged my tricycle over to the electric pole that had the breaker box on it at three years old, climbed up and turned off the electricity in the house -- funny part was my mother didn't catch on and actually had the co-op guys out to see what was wrong. He spotted the problem right away, and she felt really dumb for calling. She still reminds me of that sometimes!

I have a really good one to tell, though it's not on me. My dad's youngest brother, who is just about 13 years older than my brother, was loading feed into the back of grandpa's pickup one day when he was about 16 or 17, and was going a little fast pulling out of the barn (it was an old barn that you could drive through the middle with mangers and stalls on both sides), and ran over some of grandma's chickens! Knowing he would never hear the end of it, he tied their legs to some old cinder blocks he found and threw them in the pond so Grandma wouldn't find them. He then told my brother (who was about 3 or 4) who was with him he'd better not dare tell Grandma about that. Of course, the first place my brother went was to hightail it to the house and tell Grandma exactly what happened in detail! They still talk about it when everyone gets together sometimes, along with the time the two oldest boys in the family decided to tie the bucket calf to the wagon and use him to pull them around! You see, he took off through Grandpa's cane patch, and.....

-- Christine in OK (cljford@mmcable.com), January 23, 2002.


Spent my childhood avoiding my uncle.

-- Susan in Northern Michigan (cobwoman@yahoo.com), January 29, 2002.


I often wonder how any of us survived our childhood. My mother used to say if she could raise the four of us to adulthood without any of us killing ourselves or each other, then she had been a good mother. We did and she is.

Wishing you enough.

-- Trevilians (aka Dianne in MA) (Trevilians@mediaone.net), January 30, 2002.


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