The Worst Thing You Did As A Kid

Posted by Maximum Fun on 25th July 2006

Yesterday’s contest asked you, our beloved public, to tell us what the worst thing you ever did as a kid was. Your responses are below. If you’d like to share a story, add it to the comments!

“The most worst thing that I did as a child involved putting my hamster in a ball and rolling it down the stairs, repeatedly.”
“There was a guy I didn’t like when I was in the 9th grade named Donald. We found ourselves at the same bus on our way to a drum line competition. He told us all the riveting story of how, as a young child in the Philippines, he had seen his father bludgeon his mother to death, and how he’d been really messed up psychologically by that ever since. Since I really didn’t like this guy, the sympathetic part of me shut down and I instead saw this story only as Donald’s desperate attempt for all of us to feel sorry for him. So, I proceded to make up my own story. About how my twin bother had been hit by a car when he was a young boy. And how I was holding his hand at the time he was hit by the car. And how his severed arm was still clenching onto my hand as the rest of his body flew down the road and eventually crumpled to a heap 200 feet away. “Really?” a member of my rapt audience asked. “No!” I replied. Everyone laughed and laughed. And no one seemed to care about ol’ “Bludgeoned Mother Donald” anymore, so mission accomplished! Yay!
So basically, I tried to one-up some guy’s story about his mom being killed.”
Background: From elementary school through junior high, I longed to be popular. I guess that’s cliche, but honestly, I was the type of kid that would betray anyone or say anything just to be popular. I didn’t care. I wasn’t a complete nerd; I was just this plain-vanilla, middle-of-the-road type kid, so sometimes I hung out with popular kids, but most of time, I hung out with other nerds or by myself.

And now the confession In fifth grade, I was insanely jealous of one of my classmates, Laura. She was beautiful and popular. I was actually friends with Laura. She lived near me, so we would go over each other’shouses sometimes after-school or on the weekend. At some point during the year, I got really mad at Laura (I don’t remember why). I wanted to give her the silent treatment, but that wouldn’t work, since she was my “in” with popular crowd. Instead, I wrote her a really mean letter. I don’t remember what it said exactly, but I’m sure it involved calling her “ugly” and “stupid” and was probably a bit threatening. I forged the note as being signed by Becky, the absolute least popular, most-hated girl in class. I left the note in Laura’s pencil box when she wasn’t looking. Eventually, Laura found it, got upset and reported it directly to the teacher. I, then, wrote Laura a second nasty note, also signed by “Becky”, about how stupid she was for tattling. The teacher, who was not a sleuth, eventually
confronted me about writing the notes. (A tip: when forging threatening notes to classmates, you should attempt to alter your hand-writing to look like theirs at least *a little*). Upon being confronted with such an awful act, did I break down crying and beg forgiveness? Absolutely not. I did break down crying, but it was to protest my innocence and offer up other classmates as potential perps. I know the teacher didn’t buy my charade, but since I didn’t write any more mean notes after that, she didn’t pursue it any further.

So, I never got in trouble for writing the notes. Most importantly, my parents never found out. And the whole thing eventually blew over with Laura, I think. I moved to a different town the next year.

No one except you, me and the teacher (whose name escapes me at the mo) knows I did that.”
“Once I gave my little brother some Wheat Thins to eat on which I had secretly spread mustard.”
“the thing i got into the biggest trouble for as a kid, and did completely in the spirit of maximum fun and with no malice in my heart, was my best friend and i covered our feet in vaseline, traipsed through my carpeted house to the hardwood entranceway, and then “ice skated.” it was awesome, and i got in sooo much trouble the next morning.”

“The worst thing I did as a child was burn my neighbor’s house down. I was 8 and at the age were I apparently decided it was cool to commit felonies. The house was still under construction and I put a match to the outside tyvek paper and it went up in flames quick. I had my older sister call the fire dept., and they put it out. The fire dept. interviewed me for weeks about it, but I guess I was convincing enough in my denials. Looking back, I can’t see how they didn’t know it was me.”

“This was a tough one for me. As a kid I don’t necessarily remember doing very many horrible things to people. I’m sure at the time I thought I had many horrible things done to me, but mostly the other kids ignored me. So on the last day of elementary school, as I was walking home, I decided to take my revenge on one of the kids I thought tormented me the most. I don’t really remember him doing much of anything to me, he was just the most annoying about not liking me. He was a very paranoid kid, often “tattling” to the teacher for things that didn’t really happen. At his most annoying, he would interupt the teacher a few times a day to tell the teacher someone had “flipped him off”, though he probably didn’t know what that meant and certainly no one else in the class knew. But I had decided he was the meanest kid, so on the way home from school, I spit in his hair. First I spotted him up ahead of me, started running, spit on him as I passed, and kept on going until I got home. I’m not sure if he realized what had happened, because I don’t think he came after me. He was probably just confused.”

“When I was about nine or ten, my friend Thomas and I were addicted to the video game Moon Buggy, up at the rec center near our house. However, being broke kids, we couldn’t play to our hearts content, so employing the creativity that is the mother of all counterfeiting schemes, we wondered if xeroxing five dollar bills and putting them in change machines would give us a bounty with which we could sate our Buggy jones. After xeroxing a sheet full at his Dad’s law office…LAW office, Thomas and I carefully cut up our faux cash, and took our ill gotten gains up to the rec center, put 10 fake bucks into the changer and got forty quarters! for free! We played for an entire afternoon, went home, and the next day, returning to the scene of the crime, we noticed the change machine now living behind the front desk, so no change could be made without supervision. We sweated a bit, but then figured nobody could tie us to the crime. Until Thomas’ older brother, on a seperate visi! t asked about the change machine, and busted us. Our parents got called, and lucky for Thomas and I, my
parents happened to know a creepy guy who worked for the local Juvie Hall, and thought it might be fun to pull some scared straight stuff on us. We were summoned to a meeting at the rec center with two guys in suits who were from the Secret Service. Yeah, that Secret Service. We lived in the suburbs of Washington DC, so I think they were legit, although looking back, you could have put any two creepy dudes in bad
suits, and we would have thought they were superspys, but we got a stern talking to, and were told never to tell anyone how we did it, so I guess I’m screwing up my parole, but I think the statute of limitations is up after 27 years. So, yeah, the Secret Service was involved in my most embarrasing childhood prank.”
“I stole a Sesame Street magazine. Honestly. The worst thing. I’ve been a much worse teenager and adult than I was a child.”
“Once while my family was shopping at the mall, I hid in a department store just to see if my mom would panic.”
“The worst thing I ever remember doing as a kid was in first grade. I drew a picture of a “naked lady” in my notebook, and started passing it around to my friends. It got snatched away by the teacher, and I ended up going home that day, picture in hand, with the assignment of getting it signed by my parents and brought back to school the next day. I was terrified of showing it my dad, but when I did, he just looked at it and laughed. Awesome.”

“I was 9 or 10 years old and spending the summer at a hockey-themed camp that was run by a really scary, kind of old school Boston Irish guy named Pat that didn’t really tolerate no horsing ’round. So I took all this to heart and kept tight control over my behavior, thinking I was gonna do fine. Inevitably, though, I must have done or said something to get everyone riled up, because one morning in the locker room I found myself in a screaming match with another kid. I think he was younger than me, and likely a better hockey player, none of which I took kindly to. He had really thin hair–not really noticeable if you didn’t look hard, but as I was sort of scanning him for possible defects, this jumped out at me. So now we’re yelling at each other and, grasping at an insult, the only thing I can think to call him is “Bald.” He doesn’t say anything, and leaves the room, at which point another kid turns to me and tells me that Pat is going to kill me when he hears about this. I have no idea why. Genuinely. He explains that (of course) the poor kid had some kind of disease, or had undergone treatment, which left his hair looking the way it did. I swear that the possibility hadn’t crossed my mind, though it seems obvious in retrospect. I never did get in any trouble, though of course, years later, that kid probably still thinks of me as an enormous jerk or a really cruel person, which is kind of frustrating because I’m a nice guy! It actually depresses me to think about it.”

“My dad had hid the boring balloon between the mattress and box springs. What a weird thing for a six-year-old girl to find hidden. It was, after all, my parents’ bed where I sensed there was little shared happiness.

I remember thinking the open loop too big for my ring finger, too rubbery for a fun toy and too small to put on my puppy’s nose.

Ah, but so very fashionable!

I slipped it on my new turquoise cowgirl belt and wore it to Sunday School before anyone, especially me, understood my lack of fashion sense!

The Sunday School Superintendent apparently pulled my Mom aside after class and asked for an explanation. Not believing she hadn’t noticed on the condom was there before Church, my Mom thought the woman didn’t know how much about balloons and told her she’d get some for the whole class so we all could share.

Anyway, in the parking lot my Mom saw her mistake.

She ordered me to take “the balloon” off the belt and then bought me a sack of the shiniest, strongest, most expensive new mylars.

I’ve never seen a condom without remembering that happy Sunday afternoon when I scored the prettiest balloons of all!”