OUCH

[marksiwel]

I was this kid

Burning my name into fences, ant piles and lawns

[USA1]

Anyone notice none of the ladies here have posted in this thread yet?....boys will be boys.

[The Annoyed Man]

You guys are merely stupid. I, on the other hand, am truly retarded.

When I was about 10-12 years old, I went with some of our neighborhood kids to a gun show at the local VFW post. At the show, they had loose .30-'06 cartridges for sale in bins, and I stole some of them. We were trying to make a pipe bomb, and we figured that we could disassemble the cartridges and use the gunpowder for the bomb. I should add at this point that we didn't even have a target in mind yet. We just knew we had to blow something up, and thanks to newspaper coverage of the Weather Underground complete with illustrations, we knew how to make a pipe bomb.

At some point, before pulling the bullets, my friends and I figured out that if there was a way to get the primers out of the cases, we could add them to the gunpowder, increasing the efficiency of our bomb.

OK, so here's where things take a twist from the merely delinquent to the truly retarded... I figured out that I could put an empty, primed case into a bench vise, neck up, and my dad's rat-tail file with a pointed end would fit down into the case. I figured that by gently tapping the file from the other end with my dad's light tack hammer, I could actually drive out the primer.

The miracle is that this actually worked 2 or 3 times, and I successfully removed the primers. But what I didn't know is that some of the cartridges had standard primers, but some of those cartridges were mil-surp with non-removable Berdan primers.

So I mount this case in the vise and put the file down the neck, held my tongue just so, and started tapping.

tap tap tap... ...nothing

Tap Tap Tap... ...nothing

TAP TAP TAP... ...nothing

TAP TAP T BANG!!!

That file shot straight up between my index finger and thumb and stuck itself, like a pencil in the classroom, into the garage's ceiling tile. I discovered pressing business elsewhere.

A little later, I crept back in, my sins still undiscovered, and got up on a stool and retrieved the file and the hammer and stowed them; and cleaned up the other criminal evidence. Confession being good for the soul, I waited until I was about 35 before I finally confessed it to my dad. It turns out that he had noticed the hole in the ceiling tile at the time, but he had come to the conclusion at the time that he really didn't want to know. Not knowing was better than knowing.

[bci21984]

my one and only ND was when i was about 12 or so, "playing" with a g22, i had dropped the mag, but forgot about the chamber, the round entered the wall above my parents bathroom door at an angle, went through and entered the ceiling of the bathroom. In my "oh shiat, did that just happen" panic, i put the g22 back in my dads duty belt, and racked my brain trying to figure out how to cover my tracks. i mixed some toilet paper, toothpaste, and water in a cup and used it to fill the holes, i textured it best i could to match the walls and then touched up the paint. it took about 3 years for my paper concoction to finally succumb to the steam of my mother and 4 sisters showers. my dad was coming out of the shower one day and noticed the hole in the ceiling, i was unaware the concoction had become dislodged.

after being confronted, i figured statute of limitations were in affect and spilled the beans, i got a very stern reiteration of gun safety, but i didnt get beaten.

[marksiwel]

my one and only ND was when i was about 12 or so, "playing" with a g22, i had dropped the mag, but forgot about the chamber, the round entered the wall above my parents bathroom door at an angle, went through and entered the ceiling of the bathroom. In my "oh shiat, did that just happen" panic, i put the g22 back in my dads duty belt, and racked my brain trying to figure out how to cover my tracks. i mixed some toilet paper, toothpaste, and water in a cup and used it to fill the holes, i textured it best i could to match the walls and then touched up the paint. it took about 3 years for my paper concoction to finally succumb to the steam of my mother and 4 sisters showers. my dad was coming out of the shower one day and noticed the hole in the ceiling, i was unaware the concoction had become dislodged.

after being confronted, i figured statute of limitations were in affect and spilled the beans, i got a very stern reiteration of gun safety, but i didnt get beaten.

Reminds me of the time I carved my name in an antique dresser. 5 years later they replaced the TV in that room that the Dresser was on. My Father yelled in his best Marine voice 4 rooms away
Mark
He dressed me down and finally asked me "When did you do this" 5 years ago, when I was 10, basically he calmed down and asked "What other dumb thing have you done in the last 5 years" and then I showed him, and got grounded for a weekend.

[USA1]

I stole some of them. We were trying to make a pipe bomb

I trust that you omitted those little details while filling out your CHL application.

[davidtx]

We used to make "cannons" out of a short piece of 3/4" galvanized pipe with a cap that had a 1/8" hole drilled in it and bolted the assembly to a piece of wood. Unscrew the cap, insert a firecracker with the fuse through the 1/8" hole, assemble and load the muzzle with a dirt clod. Make several of these, divide the neighborhood boys up into two armies and then go at it. The war would generally end when somebody decided to load multiple firecrackers and use a rock instead of a dirt clod...I'm pretty sure I was the first one to get a rock to the head.


Electric fence......ah, I can still hear my little brother's scream when the neighbor boys convinced him to pee on the electric fence. We were 200 yards away in the house and life froze when that happened.

edited for grammar

[The Annoyed Man]

I stole some of them. We were trying to make a pipe bomb

I trust that you omitted those little details while filling out your CHL application.

Hey, I was a retarded 10 year old. Besides, I never did make the bomb. I was still busy trying to get the stains out of my pants a week later.

[The Annoyed Man]

Electric fence......ah, I can still hear my little brother's scream when the neighbor boys convinced him to pee on the electric fence. We were 200 yards away in the house and life froze when that happened.

Aaaaaaaahhh. I feel so much better knowing I'm not the only one who did that to a little brother.

[TLE2]

When I was young, a friend and I dropped an M-80 in a glass jug..and stood a few feet away to watch it. Thank God we're still alive!

[jimlongley]

We used to make "cannons" out of a short piece of 3/4" galvanized pipe with a cap that had a 1/8" hole drilled in it and bolted the assembly to a piece of wood. Unscrew the cap, insert a firecracker with the fuse through the 1/8" hole, assemble and load the muzzle with a dirt clod. Make several of these, divide the neighborhood boys up into two armies and then go at it. The war would generally end when somebody decided to load multiple firecrackers and use a rock instead of a dirt clod...I'm pretty sure I was the first one to get a rock to the head.


Electric fence......ah, I can still hear my little brother's scream when the neighbor boys convinced him to pee on the electric fence. We were 200 yards away in the house and life froze when that happened.

edited for grammar

My father had a radio tower in the back yard with a gin pole socket attached to it. I gin pole socket was just exacty the diameter of a Minute Maid lemonade can and about two feet long. My buddies and made a firecracker mortar out of it, with lemonade cans filled with dirt and gravel, (flour was fun too, poof!) and various size firecrackers, launching projectiles over the barn with Cherry Bombs and M-80s. We graduated to cans filled with plaster but they didn't react well to the fireworks because fireworks explode, not deflagrate, and demolished the plaster.

And then one of the kids came up with some black powder.

We made it over the barn several times, and then decided to try doubling the charge. "Bing" and it went up in the air and we lost sight of it, and we hunted all over the place for it, only to find it embedded in the middle of the road in front of the house. We were extemely lucky we didn't hit a car. The "mortar shell" traveled about 400 feet to get there.

[5thGenTexan]

Brother, cousin and I were about 9 or 10 years old we decided to hold a little shooting match with my brand new air rifle. Let's just say me were looking for some small targets when we decided a 22 short laying in the groove of the redwood picnic table was fairly challenging. We had a full box and each was to get a shot from 10 feet rotating through until you missed and was eliminated. My gun so I go first and light one off, cousin sets his off, my brother pops his but we had not yet mastered that physics thing about that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Brother caught the rather speedily retreating case dead center in the solar plexus. Match ended after round one all square and a tad wiser.