Being a little pr**k as a kid - we all did it.

[Ritch]

When I was a kid, I used to take Thai Boxing lessons at my local camp. We'd go down for 90 minutes twice a week and act as if we were Jean Claude Van Damme. One week, one of the senior guys named Phil who used to be in the class afterwards had a go at us for leaving the changing room in a shit state. A few of us decided the battle lines were drawn and we stayed behind whilst the senior class was put through their paces.

Now the place always smelt strongly of Deep Heat and there were often tubes laying around all over the place. After the senior session, the eight or so guys headed off to the showers, myself and my best mate liberated a tube of Deep Heat and slathered it all in the crotch of Phil's underwear. We retreated quickly back to the waiting room where the coffee machines were and sat there for ten minutes until there was a yell of pain coming from the back and someone else chipping in with "Rinse it off in the sink!"

I'm not sure if he ever suspected but we never heard anything further about that. He left not long after.

 

[KnightsofRowallan]

Ravers school sounds a bit like mine. Interestingly Mrs KoR worked for the local police and recognises plenty of names from my old school.
Was a bit of a little shit looking back, but probably no more than most kids; there were plenty of headcases in my year to take care of that. They were mostly into violence. I just wanted to get my exams done and get away from them ASAP.

But I came to prominence as I discovered items called "Detonators". Being a bit nerdy and into trains, trucks, tanks, etc I knew about such things. Used by the railway to signal danger, you put them on the rail and they make a loud bang when crushed by passing train. Loud enough for the driver to hear.

Trying to ingratiate myself with the "bad lads" , ostensibly so I could avoid the violence, I told them about these things and they insisted I show them where they can be found.
Basically in the cab ends of DMUs and Locos in the railway yards. Long story short, they went and nicked some. I ended up holding a tube of 10 "until we need them".
Word quickly spread about these things and LOADS were getting stolen and it made it to the local paper IIRC.
Eventually one of the bad lads (last I heard in 2011 he was up for burglary with 154 previous offences) brought some into school. One lunchtime they managed to set one off on the school field and the shit hit the fan.

I was implicated as the source and found myself in an office with the Deputy Head, Head of Year and a couple of serious Transport Police officers. Uh-Oh!
I explained that I had been merely the source of the information, I hadn't trespassed into the yard or taken anything(which was true).
"But Bad Lads say you have some too, they gave you them" (ooh the fcuking grasses). Thinking that if I wasn't in possession of them then I would be OK, I lied and said I had thrown them away into a field next to our house.
I was sent back to class. A few hours later I was called out of class and sent home as the Police wanted me to show them where I had thrown them. Get home to see 2 dozen coppers have been doing a finger tip sweep of the field searching and couldn't find them.
That was because they were in the bottom of my wardrobe, wrapped in two jumpers in case they went off.
Having confessed and handed them over the BTP were pretty good about it and I got chat about how dangerous they were, etc.
And there ended my criminal activities..... until I got to RMAS

 

[Danny_Dravot]

My adolescent antics seem pretty tame in comparison: air rifle poaching, illegal fishing, scrumping etc. All good kids stuff. Illegally obtained fireworks were the pinnacle of horseplay, but back then (80s), you could only get fireworks in November. So in the long summer holidays, alternatives had to be sought. The tale of primitive IEDs ensued:

The dad of one of my mates had a collection of shotguns, all safely locked away, but his ammunition wasn't. The sight of hundreds of live cartridges was like a curry to a pisshead to bored and "scientifically curious" 12 year olds.

We initially experimented with homemade claymores using mecanno to form the breech to hold a cartridge, and trigger mechanism operated by a command wire to release the spring-loaded firing pin. We attempted to use it to blast pigeons after scattering bread in the killing zone - very unsuccessful - yanking the wire scared the birds. We soon got bored.

I suggested that we made a bomb. I'm not sure why? We began cutting open the cartridges to extract the powder. It was a slow process. Initially we had enough to half-fill a 35mm film canister (remember those?!), with an extended fuse made of petrol soaked string it went bang, well, more of a fizz-pop. Disappointing.

Now, being 12, I didn't fully understand the science of sympathetic-detonations, but I knew a percussion cap would initiate a secondary explosion, as opposed to a just a fizz-pop. And we needed more bang, so more powder. We must have sliced open at least 30 cartridges to obtain a reasonable pile of black-golddust.

Next, we required a housing for our device. A standard tin, jar or coke can was too big, but back then you could get half-size tins: beans, sausage & beans, spaghetti hoops etc - I dunno if they still exist - as luck would have it, it was lunch time and we had one such tin available. After a hurried lunch of cold beans and sausage, we cleaned the tin and used a hole cutter to bore out a housing for a brass cartridge end before carefully cutting off the cartridge head and securing it in place with some araldite glue.

In the shed we carefully poured the powder into the housing, which in reality had become a huge shell! My initial idea was to load the tin with all of the buckshot that we had amassed and create a pigeon massacre, but this would require adapting the firing mechanism to stealth mode, we didn't have time for that as I knew my mum would be home within the hour. We decided to conduct a test firing to check the principle and then we could work on the mechanism the next day for the pigeon Armageddon.

We jumped on our bikes and rode to a near-by wood which would be our test facility. At this point its worth saying two things, firstly I lived in a semi-rural area, so gun-shot, crow-scarers etc was not that unusual, but secondly, it was also at the height of the IRA mainland campaign and there were two barracks relatively close by (within 5/6 miles either direction). Lest to say, we never really considered the second point, but thought any sounds of shot would be hidden in the noise of the former.

We had adapted the original meccono to take the bigger shell housing, and the firing mechanism was the same sprung-loaded command wire. At the last minute I remembered reading something about WW2 artillery and compression of explosives enhanced the power, we paused temporary, as I dug out some heavy clay/mud and compressed it into the open side of the tin, using the disc from the top of the tin as a wad enabled a good tight compression. The tin was jam packed and felt very solid. We secured it to the ground and dressed back probably 20m, the command wire was a thick, strong nylon type.

Adie, my mucker had donated the powder so he had the pleasure to fire, so on a count of 3-2-1 he was to detonate....we took cover behind a fallen tree, like we'd seen in the WW2 commando comics...

3.....2.....1.....FU~CKI~ING BOOM....

To this day, and having been in proximity to explosions since, I don't recall ever being genuinely shocked & shaken by such an explosion. We literally shit ourselves and immediately went into self-preservation mode, firstly by trying to recover the device...aside from bits of meccanno stuck in tree bark, there was nothing left. We gathered what was left of the command wire, covered up the firing point and made a hasty exit. We agreed to tell nobody.

We made our way to the nearby rec where most kids hung put, playing football, riding bikes etc. Back then, adults didn't take their kids to the park, we were just left to our own devices, so we had to form cast iron alibis and quick! We joined in a kick about with some younger kids, before being joined by some lads from our year...they asked us if we'd heard about the bomb going off at the barracks....we said we'd heard something, but wasn't sure as we'd been here playing footy for hours, the little kids said nowt....!!

Tea-time came, now my mum could smell a rat a mile off, but by coming home slightly muddy, with a ball and Aidie, both hungry and needing tea, raised no suspicions. She was more concerned with recent events and trying to get news of the bomb at the barracks...we never messed about with homemade pyro again!

 

[mrdude]

My adolescent antics seem pretty tame in comparison: air rifle poaching, illegal fishing, scrumping etc. All good kids stuff. Illegally obtained fireworks were the pinnacle of horseplay, but back then (80s), you could only get fireworks in November. So in the long summer holidays, alternatives had to be sought. The tale of primitive IEDs ensued:

The dad of one of my mates had a collection of shotguns, all safely locked away, but his ammunition wasn't. The sight of hundreds of live cartridges was like a curry to a pisshead to bored and "scientifically curious" 12 year olds.

We initially experimented with homemade claymores using mecanno to form the breech to hold a cartridge, and trigger mechanism operated by a command wire to release the spring-loaded firing pin. We attempted to use it to blast pigeons after scattering bread in the killing zone - very unsuccessful - yanking the wire scared the birds. We soon got bored.

I suggested that we made a bomb. I'm not sure why? We began cutting open the cartridges to extract the powder. It was a slow process. Initially we had enough to half-fill a 35mm film canister (remember those?!), with an extended fuse made of petrol soaked string it went bang, well, more of a fizz-pop. Disappointing.

Now, being 12, I didn't fully understand the science of sympathetic-detonations, but I knew a percussion cap would initiate a secondary explosion, as opposed to a just a fizz-pop. And we needed more bang, so more powder. We must have sliced open at least 30 cartridges to obtain a reasonable pile of black-golddust.

Next, we required a housing for our device. A standard tin, jar or coke can was too big, but back then you could get half-size tins: beans, sausage & beans, spaghetti hoops etc - I dunno if they still exist - as luck would have it, it was lunch time and we had one such tin available. After a hurried lunch of cold beans and sausage, we cleaned the tin and used a hole cutter to bore out a housing for a brass cartridge end before carefully cutting off the cartridge head and securing it in place with some araldite glue.

In the shed we carefully poured the powder into the housing, which in reality had become a huge shell! My initial idea was to load the tin with all of the buckshot that we had amassed and create a pigeon massacre, but this would require adapting the firing mechanism to stealth mode, we didn't have time for that as I knew my mum would be home within the hour. We decided to conduct a test firing to check the principle and then we could work on the mechanism the next day for the pigeon Armageddon.

We jumped on our bikes and rode to a near-by wood which would be our test facility. At this point its worth saying two things, firstly I lived in a semi-rural area, so gun-shot, crow-scarers etc was not that unusual, but secondly, it was also at the height of the IRA mainland campaign and there were two barracks relatively close by (within 5/6 miles either direction). Lest to say, we never really considered the second point, but thought any sounds of shot would be hidden in the noise of the former.

We had adapted the original meccono to take the bigger shell housing, and the firing mechanism was the same sprung-loaded command wire. At the last minute I remembered reading something about WW2 artillery and compression of explosives enhanced the power, we paused temporary, as I dug out some heavy clay/mud and compressed it into the open side of the tin, using the disc from the top of the tin as a wad enabled a good tight compression. The tin was jam packed and felt very solid. We secured it to the ground and dressed back probably 20m, the command wire was a thick, strong nylon type.

Adie, my mucker had donated the powder so he had the pleasure to fire, so on a count of 3-2-1 he was to detonate....we took cover behind a fallen tree, like we'd seen in the WW2 commando comics...

3.....2.....1.....FU~CKI~ING BOOM....

To this day, and having been in proximity to explosions since, I don't recall ever being genuinely shocked & shaken by such an explosion. We literally shit ourselves and immediately went into self-preservation mode, firstly by trying to recover the device...aside from bits of meccanno stuck in tree bark, there was nothing left. We gathered what was left of the command wire, covered up the firing point and made a hasty exit. We agreed to tell nobody.

We made our way to the nearby rec where most kids hung put, playing football, riding bikes etc. Back then, adults didn't take their kids to the park, we were just left to our own devices, so we had to form cast iron alibis and quick! We joined in a kick about with some younger kids, before being joined by some lads from our year...they asked us if we'd heard about the bomb going off at the barracks....we said we'd heard something, but wasn't sure as we'd been here playing footy for hours, the little kids said nowt....!!

Tea-time came, now my mum could smell a rat a mile off, but by coming home slightly muddy, with a ball and Aidie, both hungry and needing tea, raised no suspicions. She was more concerned with recent events and trying to get news of the bomb at the barracks...we never messed about with homemade pyro again!

Ahhhh - a young terrorist, that's what you'd have been labelled as if you'd been caught. Funny story though and luckily nobody was killed or had body parts blown off.

 

[Danny_Dravot]

Ahhhh - a young terrorist, that's what you'd have been labelled as if you'd been caught. Funny story though and luckily nobody was killed or had body parts blown off.

looking back, I genuinely shudder...!

 

[Yokel]

I am seeing something of a trend here. Kids who misbehaved later doing well in life. Is this down to luck, self confidence, social skills, being willing to test boundaries, or just luck? I am just glad I could punch quite hard. Also my mates tended to be a bit handy.

 

[Toastie]

Something about a good thick greenie that you can’t really beat.

I fondly recall a mate of mine hocking a massive chunk of lung butter on the overhead projector to create a 6ft high phlegm masterpiece on the wall.

**** me my school was a zoo.

Slight thread drift. Troop Leaders course at Bovi and we’d all been tasked to produce a presentation on something or other viz Great Tank Battles. The quartet I was in decided that an all nighter the night before was a good plan for research and production whilst others were zooming off to research stuff at the IWM for weekends on end. Meh.

One of our number was actively dangerous and therefore destined for 5th Skins. Come presentation day our syndicate felt the best way to mitigate what we’d suddenly realised was going to be the biggest shambles of a presentation in the history of armoured warfare was to put this legend in charge of the vu foils and the rest of us take turns in cuffing it at the lectern. We were about half a step away from including Julius Caesar in the cast for the Battle of Kursk such was our in depth knowledge of the subject matter.

The OHP was one of those reverse jobs that projected from behind the screen. We’d briefed that when someone said “next vu foil please” our hero would put up the next one, each with a BFO number on it to offset his innate fuckwittery. We were all sat there on the stage nervously awaiting the arrival of the grown ups when the whole audience falls about laughing. Beautifully arrayed across the vu foil screen thingy was a perfect penile silhouette.

”SIT UP” roared the Duty Student as DRAC + entourage strode in at which point the chopper rapidly exited stage left amidst much tittering.

Which turned to a mass suppressed gasp as it became horribly apparent our man had left a smear of some god knows what slime across the vu foil thingy. All subsequent vu foils were tarnished by the slowly drying remains of whatever had leaked from the 5th Skins Cultural Attaché’s blobby knob.

Feedback: Excellent presentation, well researched, captured the key points but remember to clean the vu foil projector before each presentation to avoid distraction.

Last I heard of him he was a 1*.

 

[History_Man]

Slight thread drift. Troop Leaders course at Bovi and we’d all been tasked to produce a presentation on something or other viz Great Tank Battles. The quartet I was in decided that an all nighter the night before was a good plan for research and production whilst others were zooming off to research stuff at the IWM for weekends on end. Meh.

One of our number was actively dangerous and therefore destined for 5th Skins. Come presentation day our syndicate felt the best way to mitigate what we’d suddenly realised was going to be the biggest shambles of a presentation in the history of armoured warfare was to put this legend in charge of the vu foils and the rest of us take turns in cuffing it at the lectern. We were about half a step away from including Julius Caesar in the cast for the Battle of Kursk such was our in depth knowledge of the subject matter.

The OHP was one of those reverse jobs that projected from behind the screen. We’d briefed that when someone said “next vu foil please” our hero would put up the next one, each with a BFO number on it to offset his innate fuckwittery. We were all sat there on the stage nervously awaiting the arrival of the grown ups when the whole audience falls about laughing. Beautifully arrayed across the vu foil screen thingy was a perfect penile silhouette.

”SIT UP” roared the Duty Student as DRAC + entourage strode in at which point the chopper rapidly exited stage left amidst much tittering.

Which turned to a mass suppressed gasp as it became horribly apparent our man had left a smear of some god knows what slime across the vu foil thingy. All subsequent vu foils were tarnished by the slowly drying remains of whatever had leaked from the 5th Skins Cultural Attaché’s blobby knob.

Feedback: Excellent presentation, well researched, captured the key points but remember to clean the vu foil projector before each presentation to avoid distraction.

Last I heard of him he was a 1*.

Sounds about right for the Cav; they really are a law unto themselves!

 

[Toastie]

Sounds about right for the Cav; they really are a law unto themselves!

Christ, I could burn out the internet with tales of this guy alone. He was a shit magnet.

The Skins and The Bonehead contingent on the course rented a house in (IIRC) Wool that backed onto the stream. Party Central.

0100 ish and much drink had been taken. “Surfing USA” was blaring out of 50 GigaWatts of speakers and assorted naked feckwits were standing on ironing boards in the stream, chucking out surf dude moves.

Enter a lady of many summers. “I say, would you mind terribly keeping the noise down please?”

Mr Extras reply “don’t be like that, get yerself into ya best bikini and catch some waves”.

To the wife of OC Tactics School.

 

[History_Man]

Christ, I could burn out the internet with tales of this guy alone. He was a shit magnet.

The Skins and The Bonehead contingent on the course rented a house in (IIRC) Wool that backed onto the stream. Party Central.

0100 ish and much drink had been taken. “Surfing USA” was blaring out of 50 GigaWatts of speakers and assorted naked feckwits were standing on ironing boards in the stream, chucking out surf dude moves.

Enter a lady of many summers. “I say, would you mind terribly keeping the noise down please?”

Mr Extras reply “don’t be like that, get yerself into ya best bikini and catch some waves”.

To the wife of OC Tactics School.

Did she? Probably the best offer that she had all year...

 

[Tricky1982]

Another one involving my cousin when we were starting to get old enough to know better was back in 2001, we'd been through to Hull to spend our meagre wages on clothes as you do and had ventured into the gadget shop in Princes Quay and bought a couple of these spring loaded paintball guns and a few large bags of ammo

From then on and for months afterwards we'd go round doing drive by shootings on chavs and peoples houses and finding it absolutely hilarious. One time we'd spotted the typical skinny rat looking chav in a baseball cap and trackie bottoms riding a push bike with his shirt off, and my cousin shot him in the back as we drove past, and all I saw in my rear view mirror was this lad veer off the footpath on his bike and crash down the ditch at the side of the road while we were absolutely howling laughing.
If we got stuck behind a double decker bus in town we both used to keep shooting the back of it so paint was running all down the windows while the passengers were looking out of the back at us. It amused us no end imagining what the people who wash the buses in the depot thought at the end of the day when it came back in covered in paintball splats. It's a good job there was no camera phones and social media back then or we'd certainly have been made famous and in deep shit!

 

[Toastie]

Did she? Probably the best offer that she had all year...

Unsurprisingly, no. But then she was married to him and that must have required a Personality Bypass.

Now if it had been A/Adjt......

Be still my contra rotating testicles.

 

[Ravers]

Another one involving my cousin when we were starting to get old enough to know better was back in 2001, we'd been through to Hull to spend our meagre wages on clothes as you do and had ventured into the gadget shop in Princes Quay and bought a couple of these spring loaded paintball guns and a few large bags of ammo

View attachment 563567

From then on and for months afterwards we'd go round doing drive by shootings on chavs and peoples houses and finding it absolutely hilarious. One time we'd spotted the typical skinny rat looking chav in a baseball cap and trackie bottoms riding a push bike with his shirt off, and my cousin shot him in the back as we drove past, and all I saw in my rear view mirror was this lad veer off the footpath on his bike and crash down the ditch at the side of the road while we were absolutely howling laughing.
If we got stuck behind a double decker bus in town we both used to keep shooting the back of it so paint was running all down the windows while the passengers were looking out of the back at us. It amused us no end imagining what the people who wash the buses in the depot thought at the end of the day when it came back in covered in paintball splats. It's a good job there was no camera phones and social media back then or we'd certainly have been made famous and in deep shit!

I can claim similar shenanigans with these paintball blowpipes.

By the Christ it hurt when you got shot with them.

 

[Toastie]

Farm related shenanigans have made an appearance. For me this was an introduction to genuine fear and the first time I got properly lamped.

Rural (very) Wiltshire, aged 14 ish. No pub in the village but the next village, 2+ miles away had one, run by an ex Lancaster Tail Gunner. He and the licensing laws were alien to each other and the lock in usually started once the local beat copper was inside. A bunch of 3-4 of us could get cider there if we stayed out of the way and in return we did odd jobs for the old boy. The copper knew it was going on, knew all our fathers and knew that if we chopsed off or kicked the arse out of it, the privilege would end.

Hot summer evening and the long march down the lanes began. But what’s this? A steamroller? Ace, we’ll spark it up, save walking.

As you do, aged 14, possessed of a set of bollocks and a brain but not enough blood to run both simultaneously.

All went well until it became clear that we had no idea how to stop it and there was a car coming. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck! We abandoned ship and the bloody thing trundled off the road. Phew. We just ran like mad, never bothering to look back..........

Er, no. Fast forward an hour or so and sat in the pub collectively undergoing a rapid conversion to fervent Christianity when the door comes flying open and in comes the normally friendly copper. He’d suddenly grown to be about 16’9” and that was just across the shoulders, was bright red and clearly in some distress. “You, you, you and you, fuckin’ outside NOW!”

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck 2.0

The steamroller had carried on for about half a mile through hedges and flattening ditch sides etc before rolling on its side in a lateral ditch. Just short of the main London to Bristol rail line which was in a deep cutting thereabouts.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck 3.0

We were handed over to the farmer and told we’d work for him to pay off the cost of damage to ditches and hedgerows and him using his tractor to drag the steamroller back to where it belonged. He was a nasty bastard and slaving away digging ditches whilst he stood over us slagging us off wasn’t my idea of fun so I told him to stick it.

I still have a scar on my jaw from where he cracked me good style.

 

[Tricky1982]

I can claim similar shenanigans with these paintball blowpipes.

By the Christ it hurt when you got shot with them.

View attachment 563605

That looks like a right bit of kit! I've got a proper compressed air semi auto paintball gun at home as I took it up as a sport in my mid 20's after enjoying doing it on a mates stag do, but never got up to any mischief with that as it looks like a proper firearm barring the hopper and it really stings if hit by it.

 

[Danny_Dravot]

I am seeing something of a trend here. Kids who misbehaved later doing well in life. Is this down to luck, self confidence, social skills, being willing to test boundaries, or just luck? I am just glad I could punch quite hard. Also my mates tended to be a bit handy.

or just not getting caught!

 

[Hohenidoom]

Tame in comparison to the above, but here goes.

My school building was a wonderful art deco thing, full of parquet floors, polished brass and nooks and crannies galore. The upper balcony in the hall was a place we'd sneak up to during lunch and hurl hymn books or assorted fruit at the unsuspecting masses below.

This, obviously got rather tedious after a while and attentions were turned to an otherwise incongruous bit of panelling with a small padlock attached. Bolt cutters acquired the next day were swiftly used, and the paneling lifted off. Within lay not the storeroom we expected, but the void that lay above the war memorial (allowing natural light either side) two floors below. A platform and ladder attached lead swiftly upwards to the loft - a huge space filled with pipework, massive "don't step" signs (and with a three storey drop we didn't!) and the graffiti from all the previous people who'd been up there - dating well back to before the war.

It became our secret little base, and many a Marlborough light was dispatched, as well as returning to our old habits of dropping things on people, but now from a much greater height. Watching first years being flattened by various things still cracks me up.

Things eventually got out of hand when we had the clever idea of showing some naïve younger pupils and locking them in. I've no idea how long they were up there.

More a Jennings's style effort than some of the madness described above!

 

[lokiuk]

That looks like a right bit of kit! I've got a proper compressed air semi auto paintball gun at home as I took it up as a sport in my mid 20's after enjoying doing it on a mates stag do, but never got up to any mischief with that as it looks like a proper firearm barring the hopper and it really stings if hit by it.

You could build yourself an Aliens sentry nerf gun

 

[soutie]

There was a corner on the stairs that was above the door to the girl's toilets where we would chew up mars bars and stuff and drop the masticated mess onto the hair of the girls entering their sanctum, I think it might have been either a primitive mating ritual or evidence of the existence of the patriarchy.

There's a better use for the girl's toilets than that my son.

 

[Toastie]

There's a better use for the girl's toilets than that my son.

For starters, they always had comfy bum rather than that Izal “scratch and sniff” shit that’s now sold in Halfords as 60 Grit.