Kids are dumb. Not always, of course, but I dare anyone to deny that pretty much all kids do stupid things at some point in their short lives. As children, we get ourselves into dangerous situations despite being warned and we do dangerous things (hello, playing with matches) despite being told not to. And when we do, we’re lucky that the people who gave us life don’t just put us up for adoption.
Recently someone on Reddit asked, “What was your ‘Oh shit my life is over my parents are gonna kill me’moment you had as a child/teen?” And since every adult was once a child, people had tons of answers that will make you just shake your head, because kids, man.
1. The closest of calls.
I was 17 when I drove my girlfriend home from school and we ended up in the shower together. Just as we turned the water off, we heard her dad opening the front door of the house. Well, my truck was in the driveway, so of course he knew I was there. He came stomping down the hallway and banged on the bathroom door, and my girlfriend — wearing nothing but a towel — lied her ass off, saying that I was at a nearby friend’s house. Meanwhile, there I was hiding behind the shower curtain, terrified, frozen, ~shriveled~, and preparing to meet the hereafter.
Me and that girl have been married 26 years.
2. Just a little snack.
When I was 11 I wanted s’mores and I was home alone. I went out back and made (what I thought was) a safe little fire surrounded by rocks. Wrong.
Ultimately, the embers caught some leaves under my parents deck on fire and I watched in abject horror as their house went up in the biggest motherfucking flames I’d ever seen.
They were loving and supportive after finding out I was alive but certainly less than thrilled at my idiocy.
3. This is why we’re not supposed to play with firecrackers.
I was bored and started throwing tiny firecrackers into the toilet. The fuses on the first few just burned up inside the toilet bowl, but on the third throw, I missed the bowl and the firecracker landed on the edge of the toilet. Well, the fuse started up, and as it fell into the bowl, I expected a huge splash, so I ran out of the bathroom. But, as soon as I heard the explosion, I knew something wasn’t right. So I opened the door, and lo and behold, the bottom of the toilet was totally blown off, and the walls and ceiling were covered with water and gunpowder.
I called my grandpa (who I was really close to) and told him what I did, and he took me to Home Depot to buy a new toilet, which he installed that afternoon. My mother still has no idea.
4. Jesus saves.
When my husband was younger, he and his brothers were wrestling with the new youth pastor. They pushed him into the wall and his butt made a hole! Well, since the hole was close to the ground, they just leaned a portrait of Jesus over it which hid the hole for at least ten years!
That pastor told the story during our wedding ceremony when he married us 13 years later!
5. Not so sneaky after all.
A friend and I snuck out of the house past curfew and thought we made it back in undetected — we slid in through the dark house without waking the dog, and eased my normally cranky bedroom door open. After we slipped in, we latched it quietly, and turned on the light saying, ‘Fuck yeah — we did it!’ My mom was sitting on my bed.
6. WHOOPS.
For a month, I kept secretly taking the internet cord from my parents’ room and running it to the living room to plug it into the TV box. Well, I was washing the dishes one day when my dad started reading aloud the porn titles on the bill.
7. When kids on farms get drunk.
I was 14-years-old when I got drunk for the first time while on a farm. Well, drunk kids want to try to ride pigs, right? So I climbed the fence to get to the pigs and fell backwards, breaking my collarbone. I had to call my dad at 2 A.M. to come take me to the hospital. I was scared to death, but somehowhe didn’t even notice I was drunk!
8. Uh-oh.
I was texting my brother for help with something, and called my mom a ‘bitch’ in the text message. Then I accidentally sent it to my mom instead.
9. Shared computers can be a problem.
I was 14-years-old when I entered the computer room to see my father staring at the erotic sex story I had written about my religion teacher. I yipped in fear and turned completely white, but then my father turned around to look at me and lost his shit laughing.
I ran to my room as fast as I could and hid in bed until the next day. I was terrified that he was going to tell my mom. But 10 years later, he’s still never mentioned it again.
10. Having toddlers AND prized possessions is hard.
My dad had a 1969 Dodge Charger that was his pride and joy. When I was a toddler, he had parked it at the top of our sloped driveway and gone inside to get his fishing supplies. Well, I jumped in the car, removed the parking brake, and rolled the car down the driveway right into the side of my mom’s car! My dad was able to jump through the window and stop the car before it kept rolling into the street. They saved the police report in my baby book.
11. Kids are professional stain-makers.
When I was 6-years-old, I spilled grape juice on the tan carpet in our living room. I put a pillow on top of it, laid down on it, and vowed that I would stay there the rest of my life so my parents wouldn’t find out. Well, I lasted about 45 minutes, and my mom was still upset…that I got grape juice on the pillow.
12. They were not in the clear.
My buddies and I got arrested for some very foolish and regrettable criminal mischief. We managed to keep it from our parents by getting to the mailbox first to destroy courtnotices and letters from lawyers. Well, we thought we were in the clear…until the newspaper article with our names in it came out.
13. The ol’ baseball through the window. What childhood is complete without it?
We live in a two-story colonial, and my parents were away on vacation. I was in the yard tossing a baseball in the air and catching it — just a 9-year-old entertaining myself — when I thought to myself, ‘Let’s loft it onto the first split-level roof and then it’ll roll off and I’ll catch it!’ The second toss shattered my sister’s window. Grandma was babysitting. Grandma reported. I was smoked.
14. Warnings mean nothing to children.
Every day, my mom told me to be careful near the frozen pond next to our house. Well, one day enough snow melted for my friends and I to play soccer in the field nearby, and the ball ended up dead center in the middle of the icy pond. I figured if I could throw a stick on the ice, it was safe to walk on. So after determining the ice was stable by throwing two sticks, I walked out to the center of the ice. And the second I picked up the ball, I fell straight through…
I had to break the ice the entire way back to shore and dry my clothes at my friend’s house nearby. I’m now 26-years-old, and still could never tell my mom I was dumb enough to go out there.
15. As long as the lizard was fine.
There was a small lizard trapped in our garage under a pile of wood one day. I started moving the wood to let the lizard out, and accidentally knocked over a large plank, which went straight through my dad’s windshield. The lizard was fine, though.
16. Shoe polish is indeed flammable.
My best friend and I had recently gotten an air rifle, so we were in my back garden one day shooting it at things. We laughed as we banged out a can of Coke and a deodorant. Then we shot a can of shoe polish, which it turns out, is flammable. The explosion set fire to my stepdad’s shed, and the actual can shot up into the air like a missile. Well, this was in central London in 1991, and there had recently been some terrorist attacks on the city — soit wasn’t long before ARMED POLICE showed up…
The reprimanding we got from the police was terrible. But it was nothing compared to the look in my mother’s eyes the whole time it was going on, because my friend and I knew that when the police left she was going to go absolutely fucking mental. And she did. My mother is a mild-mannered person, but not that day. Not that day.
17. Non-food items + microwave = usually not great.
When I was 11-years-old, I put my gel pens in the microwave to defrost because my teacher had told me the ink was ‘frozen.’ Let’s just say I had to work extra that summer to get my parents a new microwave.
18. Only a kid could think a dad would forget.
I was 17-years-old and hadn’t been driving that long. My car was a super-slow Saturn that I stuck a fart can on, and I saw an equally slow Civic with a fart can, so decided to race him. We took off doing 70 down a 35 like idiots when, in the oncoming lane, I spotted my dad’s car…too late. It felt like slow-motion, as we passed each other and made eye contact.
I didn’t come home for hours, hoping he’d forget. But when I finally did, he was waiting at the kitchen table to take my car keys and ground me for two weeks.
19. Grounded forever.
When I was 14-years-old, my mom had leftme and my 8-year-old brother home alone to run an errand. Well, my little brother pissed me off, so I chucked a cordless phone at his face. He started bleeding everywhere and I saw that I KNOCKED OUT ONE OF HIS TEETH! We both panicked. Turns out, it was an extra tooth that he was scheduled to have pulled a few days later. But we still had to call my mom. And I was still grounded.
