What bad things happened to you while you were out as a free-range kid/teen?
Posted by Detuned_Clock@reddit | GenX | View on Reddit | 149 comments
Just wondering, since I’ve read so much “nothing bad ever happened to anyone”.
aretmis_Smoke2144@reddit
So many dirty phone calls while home alone and a young kid.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
oh man, the stories I heard from my high school friends about obscene callers while we were all babysitting. so many of them.
aretmis_Smoke2144@reddit
It really was disgusting. And in the days before *69 and reverse lookup, it just kept happening and happening.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
now that I think of it, I have to wonder how come it was so much more common when my friends and I were babysitting. it makes me question whether some of the callers were those nice young fathers or the nice friends they were out with. yick.
aretmis_Smoke2144@reddit
Oh that’s just disturbing, more than it originally was. Specially now as a parent.
a_passionate_man@reddit
Nothing except that I once accidentally stepped into a broken glass bottle that pierced through my shoe and injured my foot. I had a fresh tetanus shot before, so my mother just cleaned the wound, put on bandages, and that was it. Took about 2 weeks and I was running around as if nothing happened.
BoneDaddy1973@reddit
SA by a stranger in a different stranger’s back yard when I was 8. Started smoking pot at 12. Too many fights, too many times running from actual factual danger to count.
There was a group of about 6 or so guys in their early twenties in my town that specialized in grooming 6th, 7th and 8th grade girls, when I was about that age. I know of maybe 12 victims, most with very bad outcomes.
Plenty big bad things happened to most of us. We just don’t talk about it.
xenya@reddit
Had a middle aged man stalk me and eventually try to pull me into his car when I was 16
Sexually active at 14 with a 23yo
Dad's friends hit on me from 12 on
Braces broke so I took pliers to them to get the wire out of my cheek
Accidentally made chlorine gas when mixing cleaning products when I was 10
Parlava@reddit
Almost got kidnapped, TWICE!!! Luckily I was taught what to do and go away. Scary shit though
Chile_Chowdah@reddit
Who didn't have the random van pull up and ask us what we were up to or if we wanted some candy or some other treat? It happened three times that I remember. The standard response was to haul ass into the woods, swamp, backyard that was the backdrop for said encounter. Ah, the good old days where abductions still happened but less people were aware.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
Yeah you didn't see us kids getting all dramatic about it. They're was no "boohoo Mr Quagmire's selling nude polaroids of me down at the bowling club." No. You took it on the chin like every other time it happened. We didn't tell our parents because after rubbing dirt in it, we'd moved on entirely.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
meh, depends who you ask. you have a very polarized perspective on it.
imo there is a lot of what you call "boo hoo". every single thread asking us about some aspect of growing up has a string of people spilling trauma, every time.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
You know, I was going to put a /s , but felt it entirely offensive to everyone's intelligence in this group since we are not the kind of people who see dog shit across the street, cross the road to step in it, then express anger by our own choice to do so.
Some of us survivors of life long abuse use humour. You are not a gate keeper of humour, nor of how people express their own experiences.
We'll have none of that wandering uterus hobbyist bs here, thank you 👍
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
sure, do it your way. but when you elect to speak in the collective we, it seems like fair game for comment to me.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
I hope your day gets better. It's all good.
Taodragons@reddit
This shit happened so much! My best friend and I were fully feral, so we would always fuck with those cars if we saw them parked somewhere.
NevenderThready@reddit
Milkshake. My would-be abductors offered me a milkshake from a panel van. I guess they were noobs?
iggly_wiggly@reddit
I accidentally walked into Czechoslovakia. I got in trouble when I told my Opa/Dziadek I went somewhere that had signs in funny words
beaushaw@reddit
I might get some details wrong here but when Molly Shannon was 12 her and a friend snuck onto an airplane and flew to New York City. They walked around the city all day and eventually wondered how they were going to get back. She called her parents and their advice was, you snuck onto a plane to get there, see if you can sneak onto one to get back. So she did that.
This may be the peek "Fuck it, you can figure it out" Gen-X parenting of all time.
iggly_wiggly@reddit
I do recall something like this!!
jpkmets@reddit
This is a good story (since it ended up ok!)
iggly_wiggly@reddit
This was in 86 or 87 when those borders were a bit more ‘goofy’.
East-Pound9884@reddit
Luckily nothing but it still boggles my mind that my parents had NO idea where I was for so much of my youth. No cell phones. And apparently no concern for my safety lol😂 As long as I did my chores and was doing well in school, then there was no cause for concern.
DeadMeat_1240@reddit
Dislocated my shoulder crashing my bike on a ridiculously too steep ramp. And broke a neighbor kids bedroom window by tossing a hockey puck through it.
Queasy_Durian_4570@reddit
Almost shot by a farmer for trespassing! To make it worse we were playing “war” with toy guns that looked realistic back then. They accused us of shooting their pigs. Once they forcibly took us back to a friend’s house, it was late and the parent had to explain we didn’t shoot their pigs. Scary!
Which_Current2043@reddit
Was skateboarding in a parking lot. Car pulls up, 3 dudes get out and take my skateboard. I was 10-11 years old. What a dick move. A lot of the older kids would just be bullies. They did teach me to stand up for myself
MysteriousRemnant@reddit
I (f) was about ten years old, playing on the swings in a playground with my friend, when a man started riding around the playground on a bicycle, masturbating while he rode. When my friend saw him, she leapt off her swing and said in a panicked voice, “We should go home now!” and jumped on her bike and rode off as fast as she could. I hastily followed her, although I had no idea what she was so frightened of, because I was so ridiculously innocent that I had no idea what masturbation even was. All that occurred to me when I saw the man was to wonder in fascination at how he managed to make his willy stand up like that. When we got to my friend’s house, her parents called the police and my friend was bawling her eyes out, but I still had no idea what all the fuss was about. I don’t remember my own parents explaining it to me afterwards either. I shudder to think what might’ve happened if my friend had been as innocent and unconcerned as I was and if she hadn’t rushed us home to safety like that. So yeah - there is something to be said for the modern generations’ relatively free access to information, at least!
PaperCivil5158@reddit
I don't have enough hands to count the number of my female peers who shared a very similar experience. I did as well. My mom was unfazed, shaped a lot of my thinking moving forward.
NoticeEverything@reddit
I had this experience 3 separate times between 11 and 16 years old… never told anyone… 2 of the times happened with the same friend in highschool.
LCCR_2028@reddit
This sucks, but riding a bike while masturbating sounds pretty impressive.
Individual-Fail4709@reddit
We had a perverted ice cream man. Same thing. I was the older sibling, so I had the money and got more than I bargained for. Ew. My brother was pissed that i didn't buy the ice cream. Just gross. Police did not catch him. I can't go to an ice cream truck to this day. The music creeps me out!
obviousthrowawaymayB@reddit
I was riding around on my bike in the neighborhood and a middle aged man was standing in his window doing the same thing. I went home and told my parents, who called the police.
The police came, asked me to show them the house. The then proceeded to not believe me and kept asking me if I was sure. Then told my parents they thought I was making it up.
That police interaction there shaped how I feel about the police to this very day.
LastOneSergeant@reddit
I did "law enforcement" in the army for a long time.
Early 2000s on base housing.
A Staff Sergeant had a window in his laundry room that faced the living room of his neighbor's house.
The neighbor / wife complained this guy was stripping naked and standing on something to jerk off in front of the window facing her house.
We sent a female MP investigator to follow up. She watched from the same window as the housewife. She even attempted to videotape it, but the camera was not that great.
She came back. "Oh yeah, he's definitely jerking off in the window". She wrote up the report.
His commander as well as the legal advisor chose not to believe the wife or the female MP.
ChEeSeJeWyBaCcA@reddit
Whos you had the brick wall thing too? Maybe it was a trend back then lol
Wise-Medicine-4849@reddit
Managed to make his Willy stand up like that!! made me lol creeps for days
216_412_70@reddit
A few broken bones, stitches…
moscowramada@reddit
I broke my arm when a neighbor woman w/a kid hit me with her car going around a blind curve; my mother believes it was intentional (the woman didn’t like me).
No_Entertainment1931@reddit
Some things;
One day while waiting for a late school (elementary) bus to arrive my friend and I hailed a cab, cab pulled up and the driver gave us a look that didn’t feel right. I didn’t get in and told my friend not to either. He did and was never seen alive again.
Waking to school I heard a woman scream for help from a subway entry. Everyone walked by, no one went to help. She was stabbed 17 times
I was riding my bike on Houston street, tire got stuck in a drain and I flew over the handlebars into 4 lanes of traffic. 9 months of casts.
Walking home from school some guy in a van pulled up to me and a buddy and asked us if we wanted to be in a porno. Claimed girls were in the back and we could start up as soon as we got in.
You learn to live with horror and learn to look for it so you can look out for it. I have two young kids now and they have no conception of a world like that
bettesue@reddit
A lot of older men showing us their wieners…a lot.
Wise-Medicine-4849@reddit
lol I was about to say the same thing. I don’t think that issue has ever changed in society probably still happening to this day on the regular.
bettesue@reddit
I hope not. Eesh. So weird
EnergyCreature@reddit
M46 here. A lot here's the greatest hits
Age 8 an older kid was fucking with my sister. I fought him off but he cracked my head against a crumbling brick wall outside the playground of the school. Lost consciousness for a few. My sister ran and got help from the school nurse
Age 10 I was held up at gun point by a dude in his 40s while returning from picking up some comics. He took the $35 I had on me in my shoe to do groceries.
Age 12 jumped by a bunch of older kids while playing with my friends and cousins. A couple slices of skin from my brow were removed with prejudice. I became well versed in the Casey Jones usage of baseball bats.
Age 13 became sexually active with an adult woman (F27). I was falling in with my cousins that ran the streets and so my ma put me in a afterschool church program. The head front desk secretary got me pretty much a month in. Which was a mixed back of stuff for me. 8 years later I broke free from her influence with my help of my HS gf, other partner (now wife), friends and guidance counselor.
Big_Metal2470@reddit
It was a fucking buffet for pedophiles. Between the lack of supervision, the "old enough to bleed, old enough to breed" attitude, and the attitude I still think exists that boys can't be victims if the perpetrator is female, so many of us were vulnerable.
EnergyCreature@reddit
Yeah it took me a long time to see it from the lens of being a victim but yeah I know a ton of dudes that went through the same thing and it does mess with you and how you relate to others that you love.
peptide2@reddit
Watching out for creepy dudes pulling their dicks out in playgrounds is memory/ lesson we all learned from an early age . We knew not to hang around parks and school grounds alone. There was always safety in numbers
Head_Effect3728@reddit
Oh yeah? Well I smashed someone's pumpkin once, so take that.
MommaBear354@reddit
Jesus.
GoochTwain@reddit
reganomics@reddit
We took shrooms and my at the time gf got caught so I got caught too. It was really bad. But I was only grounded for a month and then moved on. Nothing permanent happened to me though. Just fun free range adventures
StubbornNobody@reddit
I wrecked on my bike after failing to navigate a turn at high speed. Twice. The second time I collided with a wooden fence.
peace_dogs@reddit
So many falls. So many bruises.
Melubrot@reddit
Got bitten pretty badly by a German Shepherd while walking from school on the last day of 1st grade. I passed the home everyday while walking to/from school and the dog would always bark at me aggressively from inside the fence when walked by. I remember having a bad feeling that something was going to happen that day. Sure enough, on my way home the gate to the fence was open and the dog was out in the front yard. Afterwards, I remember my mom calling the police but back then they had a first bite rule in which they would only issue a warning for first-time offenders. Apparently, I was his first bite and so no action was taken. To this day, I really don’t care for German Shepherds.
Taodragons@reddit
Not a thing. At least nothing with video evidence.....
virtualadept@reddit
Wrecked a couple of bikes. Dislocated my shoulder. Quite a few busted ribs.
Pale-Owl-612@reddit
Nothing very bad ever happened to me.
Occasionally we'd run into the 1980's style bullies that you've probably seen in TV and movies--the stereotype exists for a reason, lol. We'd also suffer minor injuries from rough sports pick-up games or trying crazy stunts without bikes.
A few of my friends actually faced worse things inside their homes.
dystopiadattopia@reddit
Nothing. It was great. The highlight was finding a Penthouse magazine in the woods.
writergeek@reddit
LOTS of gory cuts and gashes, bumps and bruises, one loss of consciousness after a bike ramp accident, and likely a broken finger (it's still crooked to this day) while play fighting. All were hidden to stay out of trouble.
Also went to a pool party in 5th or 6th grade and after swimming, I went up to my friend's room to change. Her older cousin came in while I was still dressed, but insisted on giving me a back massage. As soon as he put a hand on me, I felt weird and the whole vibe was weird, so I bolted and stayed away from him.
And I was once double-dared to snort the powder from that candy Lik-M-Aid (now Fun Dip). It burned so bad and I definitely aspirated. Came back out my nose, my mouth. Foamy and red. Coughed and burped that shit for days. I probably should've seen a doctor, but how do you explain that kind of stupidity?
nobodyspecial247365@reddit
Nope not putting it on the Internet
coldbrewer003@reddit
Riding a skateboard at a slow roll and stopped suddenly due to a small pebble. I flew into the concrete face down and chipped my two front teeth. I was 11.
Riding a sled saucer down a snowy slope into a tree. I was 8. A bit shaken up, but I survived obviously.
Slaves2Darkness@reddit
This one time, at band camp, the crazy red head stuck a flute up my ass.
CaptainQueen1701@reddit
We crossed the M9… 😱😱😱
One-Armed-Krycek@reddit
Too many counts of sexual harassment to list. A few that come to mind: a man showing me his genitals. High school boys chasing me and telling me they’d give me a great time in their car. Two kids on a bicycle who threatened to come back and rape me. (I didn’t know what ‘rape’ meant and when I asked my mom she said, “It’s when someone tries to make you love them.” Which is one of the most fucked up things ever.)
Two instances of sexual assault. One of those instances I escaped by squeezing through the neighbor’s doggie door who were out of town. When I got home too late, I was yelled at for ruining dinner and sent to my room. Even though I tried to explain what happened. All they heard was that I went into the neighbor’s house and that was more trouble.
Following a creek home from school and getting stuck in a boggy part. Managed to climb out but sprained my knee.
Other physical stupidity like jumping off things, climbing things. Broken bones. Sometimes went to the doctor, sometimes not because a parent said, “it didn’t look that bad.”
The list goes on.
Cool if some people circle jerk about their free range experiences. I had some good ones too, but I was not okay a lot of the time. And just because some of y’all remember it as pony rainbow time ‘toughen me up’ time doesn’t mean it looked like that for everyone else. Years later, talking to my girl pals from those days, every single one of them were sexually harassed. And half were assaulted. But you weren’t supposed to talk about those things back then. Or, you were told to get over it.
International-Nose33@reddit
SA by 7. Drugs by 13. Watched one of my closest friends dad be shot by the cops at 16.
Commercial-Novel-786@reddit
...
I really hope you're doing okay these days.
International-Nose33@reddit
Thanks. Took 30ish yrs to get off everything but doing ok now.
Commercial-Novel-786@reddit
That's awesome, my friend. So glad to hear you overcame all that!
Thick_Quiet629@reddit
Someone tried to human traffick me but I was smart so it didn’t get too far. I was 16, on an AOL chat room, and some rando guy in NY asked all about me and then offered to buy me a ticket to New York to meet him. I had a boyfriend at the time and he and I got a kick out of catphishing the dude. Luckily we were maybe smart enough to send him boyfriend’s address to send us free CDs from the record label he claimed to run. I still have the letter and often wonder if I should have given it to the police. I guess it’s not actually bad, but as a parent, I would both be worried and proud if my kids found ways to safely fuck with predators so they lost time and money and didn’t end up reaching more vulnerable/gullible kids.
Thick_Quiet629@reddit
Also, the woman in charge of my after school program was charged with molesting little boys. I remember hiding in closets a lot during that time period. I used to play on jungle gyms, swing upside down, and fall and get knocked unconscious regularly. I wonder how it was allowed to happen almost monthly. I did come to blows with my best friend over who got a cool stick we found in 3rd grade, but luckily didn’t get caught/in trouble. I remember having a crush on a cute kid named Javier when I was 12, meeting him and the beach wearing a giraffe print bikini and when a wave caused the top to crash and burn, being mortified and never wearing a 2-piece again. My “first kiss” when I was 5 involved my mom’s bestie’s son (6) being told to kiss me goodbye and me backing circuitously around my grandma’s house until I fell backwards onto an unexpected chair and getting pecked in the mouth. The adults all thought it was adorable and hilarious and I was mortified. My first real kiss reminds me that my folks moved me 300 miles from my town of origin and then used to let me take a greyhound bus to visit old friends once I was 14-15. When I’d get there, I’d stay with a family of boys, the middle of whom was my own age, and it’s a miracle that I was just naturally chaste. Sometimes I’d sleep on the couch, sometimes I’d sleep in my guy friend’s bed—his house was the local gathering spot because the boys were all really awesome and their mom had given up after their dad died in a plane crash. One time after a big fight with my best friend during a visit, an older boy “comforted” me by taking me upstairs, making out with me (what I’d consider to be my first “real” kiss), and putting his hands down my pants… I was mortified because I was on my period but I didn’t know what else to do but let him—I barely knew the guy but assumed we were madly in love and he assumed I was easy; lesson learned. At that same house, one of the older boys also found it hilarious to lock me in bedrooms and put on porn just to make me super uncomfortable, but luckily I knew he was just messing with me and neither one of us had any interest in the other (at least to my knowledge). I also attended a large group mixed-gender sleepover around that time where one kid decided I would put out and would not leave me alone (again, I was naive and chaste). Luckily, a male bestie kindly escorted said affectionate dude away once he noticed that I kept trying to get away from the dude without being rude/making a scene. And then there were all the drugs from 16-21. So many drugs. One time I had a bad trip and nothing looked normal. The sunrise freaked me out so I went upstairs and told my parents I was tripping and scared and they just told me to lay down with them and things would be better soon. The next morning they asked about what drugs I had taken and to inspect them and then they confiscated my remaining 2 tabs and took them and proceeded to attend a jam band concert where my mom got freaked out at the lettuce on her sandwich and also that it was actually 2 hits of LSD, not one. Oh and my acid dealer really liked my black leather jacket and asked if we could trade. I said sure and let him have mine and promised to give me his. In the following month he was murdered at gunpoint in my jacket. Two girls he was dating fought over who should get his jacket and I was like, dude, I know who the jacket belongs to, but just let it go, because hoo boy… Man, my folks really did kind of let the inmates run the prison, now that I think about it.
SpiritualResident565@reddit
Hit by a car at 12yo, coma for a few days.
OldSailor742@reddit
saw a rattle snake once.
jimbothigpen@reddit
Up by the water tower where we smoked weed on the way to school? Yeah I saw that, too.
OldSailor742@reddit
Naah it was a baby one and but my friends show
jimbothigpen@reddit
Oh, different snake then, I guess.
OldSailor742@reddit
maybe it was it's baby
Master-Reference-775@reddit
When 4 I knocked on a friends door, his dad answered in his underwear. Invited me in to wait for him. Proceeded to pull out his junk and ask me if I ever saw one before. Thankfully I hightailed it out before anything happened. Never told anyone. I should’ve. My grandfather was a violent type, and would’ve beat the perv to death. Age 12, a friend and I snuck out and a neighbor guy (20’s) invited us to cruise around. Took us to a secluded place and reached for glovebox. As he was opening it I saw a gun, opened door while simultaneously pulling up seat for friend and we ran like hell. Had to climb through a giant ditch and climb a massive fence, but we got away and to safety at a newspaper facility that thankfully had a night staff who called police for us. Nothing ever happened to the guy. At 16 some friends and I were randomly shot at while cruising a popular cruising strip. Thankfully nobody was hurt. At 17 I was robbed at gunpoint in a neighborhood I had no business being in, and was pistol whipped because I don’t know when to shut my mouth. Honestly surprised I am here today. Nah, nothing ever happened.
CalmChestnut@reddit
(Note: I lived in a good area. Mom advised me to avoid the neighborhood weirdo who still lived with his mom and tried to talk to girl children, and to avoid the woods.)
I was biking as a young teen when three boys on bikes appeared and boxed me in as I rode. They complimented my bike and one of the younger ones remarked, "she's fast!" The oldest put his hand on my bike and warned, "Don't get too fast now." I played dumb and nodded smiling as we continued to ride with woods on either side. The oldest one told me, "There's an abandoned gas station up the road" (true; it was a small 1920s stone building I knew)... "We can go there and... Talk." Again I played dumb and like nodded and smiled. Finally we came to an intersection where traffic was stopped and there were people. I stopped with them for a moment as we waited and they relaxed a bit. Then suddenly, still in high gear, I took off to the left up a little bridge over the river while calling, "Hi, Dad!" to a random passersby. I and my nice bike both escaped.
A few years later some man stopped his car while I was walking and kept offering me a ride in the front seat and insisting when I politely said I was almost home, I needed the exercise, etc. As I approached the village I saw a policeman and the car took off; it was a 1981 Olds Cutlass Supreme and I didn't have my glasses to make out the whole plate. I told the cop and he agreed, "Well, he tried to pick you up. Not much we can do about it." And that was that.
In nearby NYC, little Etan Patz vanished. That pretty much did it for a lot of our generation.
Aromatic_Garbage_390@reddit
Broke my arm in three places while my mom was at work. Was riding a horse that we don't even know who it belonged to. We fed it fruit and carrots every day until one day a friend of mine told me to get on him. Bucked me off so fast😂
the-great-tostito@reddit
Sorry I laughed at this. Just seems so on brand with being an unsupervised kid!
Aromatic_Garbage_390@reddit
Summer between 5th and 6th grade, never told my mom how it actually happened. Had to wait 7.5 hrs for her to get home from work before we went to the hospital
mindful-ish-101@reddit
That horse said screw your fruit and carrots! Get OFF ME 😂
Accomplished_Role977@reddit
We lit the soles of our sneakers on fire with gasoline and danced to boom shake shake shake the room
RidiculousSucculent@reddit
I was 14 when a guy in a baby blue Cadillac pulls over as I’m walking home and asks me if I wanted to do some coke. I knew he didn’t mean soda. I just said no and kept walking. He drove away.
052-NVA@reddit
Got shot by a local loser guy with a Crossman air gun, shot my own tooth out with a ricochet from a Crossman air gun, accidentally burned down a house in the early stages of being built. Thankfully never broke any of my own bones, but walked, biked, skateboarded, countless friends with broken bones to the nearest pay phone to call their mom to come get them. Temporarily lost in a sewer system we decided to explore with fucking candles that of course burnt out. We were able to follow road noise back out, wasn’t that bad in hindsight, but man that shit was dark. Fights, being chased, etc. Part of being feral was having your head on a swivel. You had to watch your back. A lot of that type of childhood is type 2 fun. I’m not sure I’d want a lot of it for a kid of mine. But the highs were really high.
DeeLite04@reddit
Nothing. I mean we got into some trouble but nothing serious. But I never suffered any major repercussions. Either it’s luck or the world was just different then.
Agreeable-Can-7841@reddit
11th grade, one of our classmates committed suicide. The school made a big announcement that ONLY his close family members would be excused for the (school day) funeral. My friends and I went anyway. Dead boy in the open casket. Bit of a wake type thing after. Tragic, but we honored him with our presence.
Back at school a little after lunch.
Suspended for five days.
Worth it.
My mom did not agree.
Commercial-Novel-786@reddit
The inability of the school system to allow friends to grieve and show respect astounds me. Like one half-day missed would have derailed the whole train. And then they make you miss five... what a bunch of assholes.
Good on you for going. You are an awesome friend.
Agreeable-Can-7841@reddit
It was 1983, the adults did not think of us as "human beings" - we were "teenagers" which they considered subhuman.
rhythmchef@reddit
I once got thirsty and had to drink from a garden hose. The horror...
winelover08816@reddit
Bad things? I got molested by older local boys. Learned how to give and get blowjobs at age 8. Might have contributed to my Grindr and adult bookstore booth addiction but, hey, what can you do?
Ecthelion510@reddit
Nothing happened to me at all, just logged a lot of hours at the playground at the catholic school up the street (it was closer than my elementary school), and then later sneaked Camel Lights with older kids in the dugout on the high school baseball field.
But one of my classmates was r@ped and murdered, so I guess there's that...
Main_Carpet_3730@reddit
I almost burned down a lot full of business signs -- Grand Island, NE, 1977. Because of course I was seven and playing with matches. The dry brush went up in a flash -- huge -- over my head and just like that it was gone. I was so scared I told my mom. She was furious and asked me where? I took her on a random path away from the crime scene and lifted up a rock that had a dead piece of grass under it. She just rolled her eyes. And that's how I learned not to play with matches.
GEN_X-gamer@reddit
The bad happened when I got home.
the-great-tostito@reddit
House next door was vacant so I was often exploring it. One day I was running around and jumped off their deck and broke my ankle! Was dealing with chronic ankle sprains ever since. At 48, my ankle surgeon said "you waited HOW LONG to finally get this fixed?"
Good times
PBJ-9999@reddit
You were just hoping the windex would fix it
PBJ-9999@reddit
LarryLeo777@reddit
I got bitten by a dog while playing in an unattended gravel pit. I jumped off a piece of (unattended) Caterpillar forklift machinery and there it was. Munch munch.
kategoad@reddit
My brother got hit by a car (or ran into a parked car) on his bike. I helped him and got blood on my shirt. To this day (45 or so years later) if I see that style of shirt, I get uncomfortable.
monkeypants5000@reddit
Lots and LOTS of flashers. Seared into my brain. Late 70’s, early 80’s.
Gonzotrucker1@reddit
I got in a lot of trouble as a youth in the early 90s. I ended up in juvenile hall for extortion, and expelled from school in the 6th grade 1992. I got a girl pregnant at age 14 she was 13 and we have a grown daughter now with grandkids, and I’m only 48. I turned my life around, and learned a good trade but never graduated high school. My free roaming as a young teenager got me in a lot of trouble. Some of things we did I cannot say without legal repercussions. Sometimes I wish my parents were more involved, and kept me home instead of letting me free roam.
gravitydefiant@reddit
It was pretty tame, really. A couple of kidnapping attempts. And the time I panicked waiting to cross a street and ran out into traffic and almost got hit by a car. Random passers-by were lecturing me for what felt like forever after that.
Big_Metal2470@reddit
Let's see:
I nearly died while exploring construction sites. This is not an exaggeration. The time I climbed a huge pile of dirt and was nearly buried alive remains vivid.
I nearly drowned in a canal.
I did a ridiculous amount of drugs as a teen, and nothing but genetics and the grace of God saved me from not becoming an addict like my best friend.
Oh, at 15 I got a tattoo that not only was badly done, but also was done in less than sanitary conditions in the home of someone I later learned had Hep C.
I dated a grown ass man as a 16 year old boy, including lots of unprotected sex during a time before HIV was treatable, and again, nothing but the grace of God saved me from HIV, because he was cheating on me with a guy who was HIV+. He also tried to coerce me into a threesome with that same guy. And he knew the guy was HIV+!
So, did I survive? Yes. Was I undamaged? No. Do I give my son more autonomy than most parents? Yes. Do I damn well make sure I know where he is and what he's doing, as well as help him understand risk and build open communication so that when situations arise, he has me and other trusted adults to turn to? Yes.
Winter_Cat-78@reddit
A whole bunch of stuff, but here’s a couple.
At 11ish I had a paper route in some nearby apartment buildings (grew up in the city). Got cornered in the stairwell a few floors up by a man masturbating and asking me to touch it.
At 13 years old I saw a guy get curb stomped.
The second one really stuck.
Detuned_Clock@reddit (OP)
How did you get away from that guy?
Winter_Cat-78@reddit
I was pretty small girl as a kid, so I ran past him and then took the stairs 5 at a time. He wasn’t moving very fast, just really gross, scary, big and trying to rub up on me.
lookatallthechickens@reddit
At 10 I went over my bike handlebars going downhill on a freshly gravelled stretch of road, and ended up with what I now realize was a life-altering TBI. It was the '80s (of course I wasn't wearing a helmet) and the main advice for any sort of injury was "walk it off."
At 11 I was playing hide and seek with a friend, and found a perfect place to sit outside for 45 minutes while she looked for me. It was a copse of poison ivy. I missed a week of school.
PeanutMcGoo@reddit
My brother and I were exploring (trespassing) in the rural area my granny lived in, trying to find a route down to the ocean, and a man saw us from afar and fired a warning shot to get off his land. We ran like hell all the way home and told my granny, and she walked with us all the way back, through a ton of chained up mean looking barking dogs, and knocked on his door and yelled at him for shooting at kids. When I told my dad on the phone, he said that was a grow-op and we should avoid that area. Of course my brother and I tried to sneak through that property again, just to see if we could do it without alerting anyone or the dogs, we had to do a lot of army inspired crawling through shrubs and tree climbing to spy. This was the 80’s in British Columbia.
feder_online@reddit
Nothing totally crazy, probably fairly normal for the times. I wasn't sexually abused, but punishment from my dad was old-school, mid-west farmer (spare the rod, spoil the child) that totally wouldn't pass for punishment in today's polite society. Drugs were around like they came out of a Pez Dispenser, but I generally avoided that mess.
GuyFromLI747@reddit
When I was 4 I was at the playground , my mom was talking to friends with my baby sister, a much older kid came up and stabbed me in the ass with a huge hat pin..
in 8th grade I was skateboarding with best friend and got jumped by 3 kids because we had told on them for shoplifting..I had bruised ribs, but a few weeks later I found the one kid that kicked my ribs alone and gave him payback
same friend when I was 16 , we were walking back from our friends house in the middle of farm land Delaware and we were goofing on the train tracks walking the rails and I slipped and broke my ankle.. we were like a mile from town and this was before cell phones .. that was the longest mile ever .. i was wearing high tops and the dr said coulda been so much worse if I was wearing low tops.. remember my dad complaining the crutches and booty were more than the cast lol
Extreme-General1323@reddit
Some cuts and bruises - but not much else considering all the adventures we had. I wiped out on my bike once as we all raced down a steep hill in the neighborhood. I lost my glasses, tore up my pants, and had a wicked road rash on my leg.
Purple-Haze-11@reddit
My friend in 3rd grade burned down their garage, I walked home when the flames started growing........My Mom was pissed.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
Time to go home when the street lights come on or the lights of the fire engine can be seen.
My friends son 'accidentally' burnt down his school. Most of it had to be rebuilt. He said he deliberately started the fire but got distracted and forgot to put it out.
In more recent years, friends of mine with very responsible young adult children, got drunk and tp'd the tallest tree in the park, then set it alight and filmed their handy work until the fire engine was almost there, when they took off running. Shared the video with their friends and when sober, begged us not to tell their kids. It was kind of adorable.
UpDownCharmed@reddit
Arson is never "adorable"
MowgeeCrone@reddit
You're adorable.
OldBanjoFrog@reddit
I got really bad road rash (still have some scars) after taking my skateboard down a very steep road.
Saw a homeless man take a crap in the Metro in Paris when I was 10.
Pretty f’ing tame compared to the stories I am reading here
maidofwords@reddit
I was about 4 years old, hanging out in the courtyard of my apartment building waiting for my mom to take me swimming. A strange man walked up and started talking to me. He pulled out his shlong and asked if I wanted to touch it. I didn’t have brothers, and had no idea what he was showing me. It kind of looked like a pile of lunch meat. But I politely said no thank you. He put it away and started asking me increasingly personal questions.
Mom looked out the window shortly after that and screamed, and the dude took off. Cops were called, came out with photos of known perps and mom made a positive ID.
The creep was later caught with a girl my age that he had abducted. Stranger danger was real.
AdamGenesis@reddit
Me (7) playing with the neighborhood kids. An older teen approaches us (maybe 7 kids total) and told us to get in his shed. Once we were all inside, he closed the door and told us to take off our clothes. This shed had round portholes on the side and I could see my older brother crossing the field and I yelled out to him and he came and opened the door and let us out. I don't recall anything after that.
Me (15) walking home from school, a car pulls up beside me and a man asks if he can give me a ride. I don't know him. He's insistent. I said "No thanks!" and kept walking home.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
I was so hoping this was going to end with the older kid offering you a doobie. Alas. No.
NotYourUsualSuspects@reddit
F56. My friend and I were on swings trying to touch the sky. She jumped off and broke her arm.
jpkmets@reddit
A few muggings. One that was funny in retrospect — got legit lifted up by a gang and they took my dang hi-tops! So I went home in socks on the streets of NYC.
JKnott1@reddit
So much I should never have seen.
-An adult family member tried to kill me when I was 8. Got on top of me and put a pillow over my face. After about 20 seconds, I was able to get away. Turns out the same family member did this to an infant about 14 years prior, and it was chalked up as SIDS. They are still alive and free today. -Later that year I witnessed two adult men fight; one had a knife, the other a wrench. Knife wounds and dented skulls are quite bloody. -When I was 13 my mother had to pick me up from the police station after my friends and I got caught breaking into cars. Halfway home, at 3 am, she dropped me off on the side of the highway, 20 miles from home. I walked halfway, then hitched a ride with this creepy pedo who put his hand on my leg. I jumped out of his car while it was still moving, thankfully, at a low speed. -Smoked weed, got drunk, and had sex all before the age of 14.
1blueShoe@reddit
I was walking down the road to go home from my friends and a guy in a blue van pulled up next to me and the side door opened and another guy tried to grab hold of me and put me in this van.. I started screaming at the top of my lungs and they shut the door and zoomed away. Needless to say I told my Grandma what had happened and a couple of cops came to the house to talk to me about it.. I was only 10 yrs old and couldn’t tell them very much. I was one of the lucky ones I guess.
pasqualeonrye@reddit
Got jumped a few times. Cincinnati was rough in the 80s
clewing1@reddit
I (f) have sort of 3, two of which are oddly connected. The first isn't free range, but it's something my parents never knew about.
When I was 6 or 7, my sister (8 or 9) and I were babysat after school at Mrs. S's apartment, which was a block away from our elementary school. Mrs. S was a young, married woman with an infant son, and I would later find out she had a reputation.
There was one day, when my sister had some sort of appointment, so it was just me going to Mrs. S's. I get there, and she has to leave with her baby, but there are 2 "men" who are going to watch me. They were maybe 22 at the oldest - hard for me to tell, but close enough. I'm watching TV and one says to the other something like, "Man, I really want some hole. You got yours here, but what's in it for me?" Guy 2 replies, gesturing to me, "There's some there. Dig in." They laugh.
I had no idea what that meant, but I knew they were somehow referencing me in a way that I didn't like and made me really uncomfortable. I spent most of that afternoon in the bathroom, which must have struck them as odd, but I did not want to be anywhere near them. (I know this wasn't free range, but it's related - and I never told my mother about it.)
At 12, I was the only girl who hadn't seen Grease. All the girls saw Grease, all the boys (and some of the girls, including me) saw Star Wars. My friend, "Ann", who was 13, and had seen Grease like 10 times wanted to go to it again, so we went to a somewhat shady second-run theatre for a Saturday afternoon matinee. There were maybe 20 people there. We sat down, with Ann to my right. Some guy comes in and sits to Ann's right with one or two empty seats between them.
Part way through the movie, Ann whispers urgently, "That's his snake!" I look over, and the guy is grinning at us while spreading and closing his knees, and has something that looks like a snake in his hand, but it's dark, and I'm really naive. Eventually, I realize that Ann is saying, "That's his dick!" and dude is full on masturbating. What do we do? Move seats and finish watching the movie. Never occurred to us to tell anyone.
The next year (13), I started babysitting for Mrs. S, who now had 3 kids and lived in a house in the neighbourhood. My 15-year-old sister was dating (and having sex with, but that's a whole other story) a 23-year-old loser stoner who lived with a roommate I'll call Jon in a house a half-block from ours. I was still very naive. One night at Mrs. S's, Jon is there before she's leaving for the evening. I "know" Jon because he lives on my street, he knows I'm his roommate's girlfriend's younger sister, and he's said "hi" before.
The next time I babysit, Mrs. S arranges for Jon to give me a ride to her place rather than call a cab. So he calls me and says it's time to go. I walk to his place, and he's "surprised" I was there so soon? He offers me a beer. Um, no. I'm 13 and I'm babysitting. He drinks a beer, then says he supposes it's time to go. Fine. Go to Mrs. S's. She leaves. Jon stays. Weird.
After an hour or 2, oldest son starts acting up (he was a brat). I make him go to his room. Jon decides that the kid isn't being quiet enough, goes into kid's room and smacks him with his belt a few times. I'm sitting in the living room, watching TV, flabbergasted. Jon comes back to the living room, belt still in hand, looks at me and says, "That felt good. Feel like doing it again". And cracks his belt a couple of times. I stared at the TV. Say nothing, don't look at him, don't move.
He puts his belt back on, sits down for an interminable while, then says he's going to go to the store, do I want anything? I say no while still staring at the TV. He leaves, and I bolt up and lock the door. Dude was seriously not right in the head. He later tried to attack my sister, and she told me they referred to him as "Crazy Jon".
justwhatever73@reddit
There was an old man in my neighborhood that us kids called the Candy Man because he had a garage full of candy he would sell for cheap. We'd get on our bikes after school and race to go buy candy from him.
Nothing ever happened to me, and I never heard about anything happening to anyone else. For all I know he really was just a nice old man who liked kids. But it didn't even occur to me until years later how creepy the whole thing sounds, and the bad intent that someone like that might have.
EducationalEffect397@reddit
When I was maybe 6 or 7, I went to a birthday party at a big skating rink and our parents just let us all roam free. What seemed to me an odd masculine looking woman came up and told me and my friend there was a “party in the bathroom.” My friend was excited and all for it, but I was anxious, freaked out, and skeptical. That just did not make sense to me in any way. The lady picked me up. I started to panic and cry, and she hurriedly let me down. We ran and told my mom, and the woman could not be found anywhere still inside. I still think about her intentions.
justwhatever73@reddit
Buffalo Bill prowling the skating rink. You're lucky you didn't end up in the pit.
pcoltimber@reddit
-Ran through a barbed wire fence while sledding and ripped part of my upper lip off.
-A buddy and I were racing down a big hill behind my house on our bikes. He was right in front of me and decided to brake check me. I flew completely over him and landed in the middle of the road. Broke my collar bone. Helmets weren't a thing back then.
pcoltimber@reddit
Just realized these both happened in the same year....1988.
Wise-Following5806@reddit
6 yrs old on my way home from 1st grade and I was held by two adult males at a condo and beat and tortured mentally. Nobody at home ever listened to my story
Detuned_Clock@reddit (OP)
How did it end?
Wise-Following5806@reddit
They just let me go home crying. I m a handyman at those condos now 50 years later. I have some feelings about it, i am just not sure what significance it has in life anymore
Dismal_View8125@reddit
My sister and I got lost in our corn field for a couple of hours. I think I was around 4 years old. My sis was 7. I remember panicking and being a little upset at first. However, my sister handled it well. She calmed me down and found us a way out. We came out pretty far away. The funniest part was that we went back into the field to get back.😂 (It was at least twice as long if we walked on the roads.) We never told our parents until we were in high school.
glendacc37@reddit
Luckily, nothing horrible actually happened...
Walking a mile to or from elementary school, there was a shortcut I could take through some woods that my mom sternly told me to avoid. I liked the somewhat shorter route as well as walking in the woods, so I often did it anyway. I recall a few times being followed. I'd continue to walk normally and confidently until I'd get around a bend in the path, out of view, and then sprint. I'd take the next path out of the woods. A few years later, a boy was found raped and murdered deeper into those woods.
Techchick_Somewhere@reddit
Got my scalp caught in the barb wire fence when we went to pat the cows at the farm down the street.
Moonglow_sunshine@reddit
-When I was 7 yo, a dog that had bitten another kid in the face used to chase me on my bike every day. He never caught me, though.
-When I was 11, I was hanging out with two boys my age I knew from school. We were going to one boys house to play video games. Suddenly, one boy stopped and told me not to come with them. When I asked why, he referred to the other kid saying, “He said let’s r___ you.” I was so confused bc I was a late bloomer and hadn’t even hit puberty yet. I went home and never hung out with them again.
Hartford0061@reddit
We rode our bikes down to the creek. It was a steep incline. My brother, who wasn't big enough to do so safely (nor were the rest of us, we thought we were), lost control. He flew over the handlebars of his bicycle and hit a concrete culvert, busting out his front two teeth.
MyriVerse2@reddit
A friend found a bicycle and decided to toss it off of a highway overpass (into a fenced in area, no danger to anyone). While he was up top, me and another friend waited at the bottom to see the popcorn show. That area was in a rather bad neighborhood and dead end street. Shortly after the bicycle became twisted metal, a guy arrives on his moped, grabs me in a choke hold and threatens to break my neck.
10-11 year old me is crapping my pants. Thankfully, the 70 year old lady living at the last house on the dead end runs out with a bat and chases the hoodlum away.
And to make matters worse, as we booked it out of the dead end street with our hearts pounding, my shoe laces got caught in my bike chain....
Head_Effect3728@reddit
Just extremely violent tackle football games that no parent would have approved of. Other than some likely concussions, we somehow avoided serious injuries. You don't kids doing that anymore.
DeadZooDude@reddit
Monkeynutz_Johnson@reddit
I spent the summer with my grandparents and hung around with kids in their neighborhood, riding bikes and exploring. One of their teachers lived a few miles away and we went to his house a few times. Nothing seemed weird, we stopped by, got some snacks and a coke (something like that anyway) played at this man's house and left. Don't remember him trying to touch anybody. Later that fall, I'm back home and my grandma called and started asking a lot of questions. Did I go there, did he do anything strange, did he touch me and the answers were all no. The teacher had been arrested, he had been molesting one of the kids I was hanging around with. I never knew anything about it until that phone call.
january1977@reddit
I stepped on a yellow jacket nest and got stung 31 times. I’d always heard that you don’t run away from bees because they’ll follow you. I panicked and froze. My dad heard me screaming (we weren’t that far from the house) and came and rescued me. He told me to run to the creek and roll around. Then he scooped me up, ran me to the house, stripped me down, and pulled all the stingers out. I looked like a bright red Stay Puft Man.
I also pissed a bull off in my grandpa’s field. He cornered me and my brother and wouldn’t let us leave. We hid in a little structure that was in the field while the bull sat outside the door. My dad came and rescued us then, too. (I was 6 when that happened.)
just1here@reddit
Very common to be stopped for directions while riding our bikes in our suburban neighborhood bc of confusing street names. Perv stopped, we looked at him, waiting for the ask. He kept staring til our eyes wandered down & his dick was out & he was waving that floppy thing around. We took off. Two first that day: 1st time I saw a penis + 1st time my wimpy self rode my bike all the way up my friend’s steep driveway. Adrenaline at work my friends!
ChEeSeJeWyBaCcA@reddit
I had a bully smash my head against the corner of a brick wall when i was like 10.
Then a different bully would chase me around(I was 8ish) with his nub (he was missing a hand) and scare the shit out of me with it while he rubbed it on my back. Freaked me the fuck out back then lol. That would've been around 1983. I laugh at it now. Lol
poppinyaclam@reddit
My lawyer said it wouldn't be wise to discuss such things in public.
RetroactiveRecursion@reddit
I was going home from fishing when I was 10 or 11 and some creep wanted to give me a ride. I kept saying no and eventually dipped into the woods and took the back way home. At that age I didn't know exactly what he would have done, but I knew it wasn't good.
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
glad to see this question asked. yes, i had some shady encounters, including one where even now 50 years later, i can only interpret their intentions as being in brady and hindley territory. the adult was using his own (they said) son to make the approach and i think about that kid sometimes. what his life must have been.
Detuned_Clock@reddit (OP)
Can you tell the story?
Optimal-Ad-7074@reddit
sure. I used to bike to this huge open park that had a water feature, to catch tadpoles. they accosted me there. I think I was around 8 and the boy was a little bit older than me.
lots of things about it were troubling. the dad just sat there a few feet away pretending to gaze out at the park and smoking. but he was listening to every word. he was supervising. the boy tried various overtures, and he just felt and looked like he felt wrong in his own skin the whole time. he was dirty. he had this cringy fear-smile going on half the time, and this too-steady stare. he had this grubby little bag of candy that his dad supplied and he kept trying to get me to take some. his dad gave him a cigarette like he was an adult, and he tried a few times to offer me that. as if he actually thought it was normal. his first two fingers were stained to the second knuckle. I mean, my mom was a smoker but I was shocked to my bones by that.
we were using Afrikaans, which I didn't speak very well at the time. that had a lot of social-awkwardness connotations in the 70's but it gave me the out of pretending not to understand.
but the capper was, after all that fell flat he just scooted up a little bit closer and said to me "wil jy maak" and this furtive hand gesture. I conveniently pretended not to understand, but that really freaked me out. I think I looked at the adult just reflexively and he absolutely heard it. he was just sitting there looking all bland and smug. I played the english-speaker card but the kid kept trying until I said I had to go.
I got out of it by excess of politeness and just pretending not to understand the subtext of any of it. they didn't try to stop me leaving and I was thankful for that. I try not to over dramatize, but I can't help feeling that I was either lucky enough to just be one of their trial runs, or the place was too open and parking lot too far away for the adult to just grab me. but the kid kept trying to get me to go play at his house and nothing even remotely good would have come of it if I'd been too polite to say no.
that kid had every marker I've ever picked up on of serious, long-term, fucked-up abuse. my sheer middle-classness saved me; I was too shocked to be lure-able.
MowgeeCrone@reddit
A creepy teenage boy wanted me to go with him and show him my vagina. When little me told him to get lost he offered me $50. I happened to have a golf club with me and took a swipe at him. He screamed and ran with me in hot pursuit.
One of his friends accidentally shot his other friend and none of them told a soul for 20 years until the guy was at the Drs with neck issues and a scan clearly showed the bullet kissing his spinal cord. He denied ever being shot until the Dr showed him the scan.
Slightly off topic, I had a mate who had his appendix removed because he didn't want to go to school that day and kept answering yes to each question the Dr asked. He thought removing his appendix was better than admitting to his mum that he was lying.