Worst mistake as a child?

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Trying to help a woman whos car wouldn't start, and as the fuel guage on Empty, I pulled the flexable fuel pipe off the carburetor to see if there was any petrol. Yes there was, and it squerted in my eye. I blindly fumbled and managed to reconnect the pipe and ran home to render first aid on myself.

Mine was oiling my bike brake blocks to stop them squeaking.

Once upon a time, when my age was still in single digits, I managed to get my younger sister's permission to open up a doll of hers to see "where the 'ma ma' came from".

Unfortunately, once my curiosity was satisfied (1) by my destructive inspection, the permission was rescinded.

(1) A very cunning but simple device which combined a gravity operated sound generator, with wave shaping by means of a circular rubber diaphragm with a central hole moving over a contoured dowel.

Chris

I suppose it depends on the definition of when you stop being a child and what temptation was in your way.....

Whilst aged around 8 with the help of my younger brother we smashed up my Dad's Ford Capri in a pub car park.

You obviously had good taste at an early age!

Throwing a bucket of water over a flaming chip pan & watching the oily flames run down the front of the house.

Asking my mother if she remembered dinosaurs.

Has anyone noticed that the black cabs of London have squeaky breaks? OK, How about me having the great idea to fill an old pop bottle with left over paint and attach it upside down to the rear of the old truck I made from bits of wood and pram wheels and then sit on it and run down the hill as you pull the stopper out. My idea was to draw a nice white line down the pavement, just like on the roads. As I speeded up the line became more a series of gloopy dots and was less than straight, On reaching the bottom and applying my break, I found it was impossible to reach back and put the stopper in. The result was painted hand, and a very messy footway for which I got a good telling off. I just don't see the problem myself, it could have been artwork today!

Then there was the time when I decided to see how fast my tricycle would go down the same hill, but On engaging the break, which was only on the front wheel, I very quickly found myself on my back with the tricycle upside down on top of me and a large cut in the back of my head.

I can think of lots of other misadventures as well, but I never fell out of a tree or broke a bone, so one has to be grateful. Brian

There were a lot of things like this. The one I recall seeing used a kind of plastic band with a groove in it that had the sound in it, and a massive needle that had a diaphragm on it to play it. It was apparently wound in a semi clockwork fashion by a weight and a kind of ratchet thing so as you rocked the doll it wound up. There was a cunning little button to let it unwind and play the voice. These toys were very ingenious. There was a tin big dipper model that used a serrated wheel and slots to climb the hill part. The clockwork only started by a little lever underneath that fell in a slot at the right time, and all the energy came from the slight incline and the drop from the top. Little things and little minds. My pet cat was fascinated for ages with this and would eventually knock the train off and then run away when its clockwork unwound very noisily.

When a little older I made an electric shock machine out of a battery, and old doorbell with clapper removed and a speaker transformer from an old radio. Good fun but I guess it could have been very dangerous.

Brian

Oh, it was common for kids to remove hub caps and use them as Frisbees. Very dangerous if one hit you. Brian

No I respected fire, it always frightened me. I used to be frightened of thunder, but later on having a dog who loved going out in the rain and being near to two lightening strikes, I was cured. May seem counter intuitive but there you are. Brian

What do you call a visually impaired dinosaur? A doyouthinkhesaurus.

Brian

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Mine was copying the paper boy and attempting to ride an adults bike downhill no hands when I wasn't tall enough to sit on the saddle.

The scar from the hole in my forearm made by the brake lever has long faded but I remember the event.

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I singed my eyebrows with gunpowder extracted from more than a few (proper) penny bangers. I looked like something out of a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

Brian

Using the mains wiring as an aerial for my crystal set by putting my metal meccano screwdriver into the earth pin of the socket to open the other pins, and with the other hand putting a bare wire into the (unfortunately) live side of the socket. I lived to tell the tale but have always respected anything over 48V ever since.

Took a swig from a brown bottle on the back seat of my parent's car.

The label said Ginger Beer; the content was petrol...

(related here before)

Pulling out a mains plug while it was feeding a (switched on) 2kW electric fire.

On DC mains.

Near a load of newspapers and an armchair.

Clamping a .22 round in a vice and hacksawing in the cartridge base was 'interesting'.

During WW2 there was an ammunition dump in the woods near our village and after the war we used to play in the woods and my mate found an intact .303 bullet which we took home and he clamped it in his dad's vice and started whacking the detonator with a hammer and centre punch! Thank goodness it didn't go off or we would both have been injured with shrapnel probably.