People Break Down The Stupidest Thing They Ever Did As A Kid

Starting Off Stupid

"When I was 16-17 I called the school, faked being my dad( they didn't know what he sounded like, they always dealt with my mom) got myself excused from school, then stole my dads truck and drove around all day with my then-girlfriend (who just didn't show up that day and her parents could have given two sh*ts). No big deal, right?"

"It wasn't until I got home later that I realized I was going to be in Big Trouble with Dad. I had assumed I would have enough time to get gas on the way home, but being a stupid teenager, I forgot."

"So I'm sitting there in my house, 20 minutes before my folks get home with a gasless truck and no way to explain what happened."

"But then, inspiration struck. I would simply put gas into the truck using my dads gas cans he kept for generators/lawn mowers or whatever. Sure I didn't know how much the truck had been filled, but if I filled it all the way, maybe he'd-- I didn't actually put this much thought into it."

"I ran out to the garage to discover that the gas cans were empty. Which was my fault, since I did all the mowing, I was responsible for filling the cans. F**k. Past me is an a**hole. Then I noticed that the tractor was full of gas."

"Getting yelled at for the mower and cans being empty = not the same punishment as stealing the truck. So I got to work. Only to be immediately impeded by the fact that I couldn't find the siphon. Great."

"Time was running out and I was panicked. So I grabbed the only thing in the garage that provided suction. The wet/dry vacuum. Somewhere in the resources of my mind I knew that gas and electricity didn't mix."

"But my panicked lizard brain didn't care. All I wanted was to stay out of Big Trouble. So I jammed the hose into the gas tank of our lawn mower and flipped the switch. The resulting explosion was heard three houses away. I'm lucky I didn't die. I lost my shirt, eyebrows and my license for six months."-LinkLinkerson

Standardized Tests

"So we had a test called the MAPs once a year in elementary school. Basically it was reading and math and it was online on a computer. I remember in 2nd grade sitting in the computer lab thinking that I cracked the code and I was a genius!"

"I realized that if I randomly guessed and/or got the answers wrong for math the questions became easier and more fun! So I could breeze through it!"

"Turns out that wasn't a good idea and I was getting a horrible score on the math section. And the reason the questions were getting easier was because it thought I was worse and worse at math."

"Thankfully someone caught me doing it and realized what I was doing afterwards and adjusted that score so it would not have hurt me."

"But thank goodness that test didn't matter in the long run or effect classes since I did so bad. Anyway I'm still only just ok at math but the complex stuff confuses me and I have to study extra to remember those super long formulas. But hey I have passed by math classes."-ravenpotter3

Ah Yes, The Traffic Game

"When I was like 7 or 8ish my friend was moving so he had a crazy amount of boxes at his house we decided to take a couple huge ones put them over us and sit in the front yard, then when we hear a car we'd jump up and run around to I guess scare the driver of the car making them think the boxes were alive?"

"Yes I ran into the street and got hit by a car while in a box. Not how I intended but I'm sure I scared the sh*t out of the driver."-Chuggs400

What you did as a kid might have been dumb, but there is a certainly a line where things get irrevocably stupider.

Gotta Focus On Listening Skills

"I was like 9 years old, I guess. Biology teacher wanted to show us some sort of salt crystal iirc."

"He had a small plastic can/box with loads of them and we were supposed to look at them a bit (they had this magnificent blue colour), put them back and pass the box to the next person until the entire class has seen it."

"Now, the box looked a lot like those chewing gum or mentos boxes, and little me who wasn't paying any attention suddenly got this box from my friend next to me..."

"I was so zoned out, I just took one of those crystals out of the box and f*cking munched it like an idiot (out of habit...?). Entire class looked at me in disbelief."

"I was like 'huh..?' and my friend whispered 'dude... these are poisonous, haven't you listened??'...well I didn't get any poisoning, but I got into huge trouble that day..."-L_Flavour

The Question Becomes "Why"?

"When I was 2 or 3 I had a humidifier in my room. Somehow I got it into my head seeing the vapor coming off the top that it would be fun to sit on."

"Don't ask me why. This being the early 80s though, and the somewhat more lax product safety design, for this thing to work it had an exposed heating element on the top."

"My mom still has the receipt from the emergency room for treatment of 'burned scrotum.'"-sharrrper

The Strangest Superstitions People Actually Observe | George Takei’s Oh Myyy

Ah Yes The Good Old Bleeding Child

"Me and my brother built a giant ramp of saw dust and crap. Then we jumped it with our bikes. Or rather, he jumped it. I flew off into the air and split my head open."

"So, bleeding and confused, I walked over to the nearest house, and frightened the absolute soul out of the poor lady that answered the door."

"I ruined the towel she gave me. Just, blood everywhere."

"I'd say oh gosh, except it was extremely funny to watch a housewife try to take care of a kid while I was just in pain, yet saying yo no this hurts but I'm good."-Throwaway583thisdumb

Good Luck Sleeping After This OneKingCapo18

"As a kid (9 years old) me and my friends spent a lot of time in the woods. But this one specific time it was just me and another friend playing and building little tree forts."

"This guy then came out of the brush of the woods and asked how we were doing and if he could play with us and teach us how to build better forts. And as a kid I didn't see anything wrong with it, I thought that it would be fun and cool."

"Obviously my other friend wasn't really comfortable with the idea but just went along with it. It was a nice short day of building forts with a random guy I met in the woods, but he then said it was time for him to go."

"So he told me if I ever wanted to play with him, he lived right on the other side of the woods and pointed behind him. I thought that was nice. Later the next day I run into the woods and go looking for him."

"I run all the way across to a couple cabins side by side to each other and thought 'oh this has to be his house' but the closer I got the more eerie it started to feel. The cabins were old, run down, and sort of looked abandoned."

"I thought I could hear someone inside but I wasn't sure, so I went closer for a better look. I then see a girl inside but she was crying and sitting on the floor under a table and didn't seem to notice me."

"She looked to be maybe a teenager but I can't really remember since I was a little kid at the time. But then I suddenly heard yelling and screaming, so I bolted back through the woods and went home. I've never heard of or seen the guy ever again."-KingCapo18

It's truly that these people are all lucky to be alive--each of these incidents, in a different world, could have gone much differently.

Poor Habits

"Basically just being a bit of a wastoid in general. I didn't take good care of myself. Terrible sleep, bad diet, poor basic hygiene."

"I didn't apply myself enough in school, even where I got pretty good grades overall, I tended to only do the minimum required and rarely tried to stand out or excel."

"Had a collection of comparably wastoid friends who we all just enabled and reinforced our bad habits and acted like the world was the problem, not us."

"That sort of attitude in life just isn't worth it. It's so hard to communicate that to someone when they are young, and trying to can sometimes only make them want to dig their heels in even more about it."

"But it's just such a limited, dead-end sort of way to live and there's just so much more out there that is worth doing."

"As I've gotten older, you start to realize that many of the cliches are true, youth is wasted on the young and all that, and I don't fundamentally regret my youth outright, more just that I wish I had snapped out of it sooner."-iuytrefdgh436yujhe2

Pretending To Be A Statue Works Great In Concept

"When my cousin and I were like 5 or 6, we thought it'd be fun to stand at the end of the driveway and pretend to be statues, then throw rocks at cars going by..."

"And thought they'd be so shocked and confused by the rocks coming out of 'nowhere' because we were statues!"

"Yeah, we were dumb and yes a woman did pull in and tell our parents and we got in big trouble."-ChickenGoose

A Hand We Are Lucky To Have

"I was about four. My older brother (14) was mowing the lawn with a loud traditional motor mower with rotary blade and collecting basket at the front."

"I decided I wanted to sit inside the collecting basket as he mowed. I called for him to stop while I got in. He couldnt hear me so I tried to physically stop him - by thrusting my hand into the rotary blades."

"Tore the whole of the back of my hand off, it hung on by a bit of skin. I was hysterical and wouldn't go to the hospital. My Dad placed the back of my hand back in place and bandaged it up. Hand healed beautifully. Brother got a bollocking."-Jagermeister_UK

These people nearly saw the ends of their lives because they did something so dumb it would have fully caused them to die had it gone even a tiny bit different.

We live, and we learn--but we need to live, in order to learn. Remember caution is your friend.