"Without Notifying Anyone, No Rope, No Light, I Just Went In Feet First" – 16 Very Very Dangerous Things We Did As Kids That We Thought Were Harmless
by Benjamin Dzialdowski · BuzzFeedWe all do silly things as kids, but sometimes we don't realise how dangerous they truly are. Well, u/Slim13withcheese recently asked r/AskReddit, "What's the most harmless thing you did as a child that you later realised was really dangerous?" And here are some of the wildest responses:
1. "Talking to strangers online."
2. "Wanted to see if a magnifying glass and sunlight would cause a little fire. Two fire trucks later and a burned up empty lot helped me realise I had messed up. Bad. I was 10 at the time."
3. "Playing in storm drains. My friend and I would climb in the opening which was up on a hill near our houses. We would go down the long dark drain which was tall enough to stand stooped in until we were a few levels deep. We would have to wait until our eyes adjusted as it was really dark. We told no-one where we were going, pre mobile phones. We were about 14ish."
4. "Regularly playing beside the railroad tracks. Small town Canada so train were always slow but still pretty crazy we treated the tracks like a playground!"
5. "Jumping off the swing at the highest point and thinking I was invincible. Now I'm just grateful I didn't break any bones."
6. "Played with the bottle of mercury my dad had on his work bench. Why did he have mercury?"
7. "I used the break thermometers with my sisters and play with the mercury. Eeeesh!"
8. "When I was around 12 years old I went for a hike with a friend – we didn’t tell anyone where we were going and my parents thought we were playing in the backyard. Well, our hike took us through the forest to a frozen river which we decided to walk across. Since it was spring the ice wasn’t as thick as we thought it was and I ended falling through."
"My friend quickly grabbed me and pulled me backwards out of the water. The water was flowing surprisingly fast and I remember at the time thinking how lucky I was that he was there to catch me. That was over 25 years ago and I still have flashbacks to that and think what if. Nobody knew where we were, and if he didn’t catch me I could have easily been swept under the ice."
9. "My family camped twice a year. My favourite thing to do when I was about 8-12 years old was to wait up until 2am, then sneak out of the tent and run around in the bush looking for wildlife. I used to go pretty far into the bush and all the way across the lake when the tide was out."
"I knew I had to be back by 4am so that my parents were too deeply asleep to notice me sneak back in. I felt like a little wild animal myself, I loved it. I scared the hell out of some fishermen once. 3am, pitch black, and some eight year old girl with muddy legs and leaves in her hair comes around a bend in the trail, freezes, then just books it into the trees. I was scared their screaming was going to get me busted!"