I was 11, and handled the ‘samples’ at a BNFL booth (at an airshow) where a geiger counter was set up, it wasn’t til the demonstration guy returned and demonstrated to someone else how the coin-sized samples set off the counter that I realised it wasn’t a ‘self service’ type demonstration. The samples were labelled with their atomic symbol, and the most reactive samples were labelled as uranium (about 20mm diameter) and plutonium (about 5mm diameter). At the time I told myself they were likely fake, since leaving a plutonium sample lying around wouldn’t be very likely.

I’ve not died of radiation poisoning or cancer yet, but it’s only been 41 years.

Wasn’t quite a teenager, maybe around 10 or 11. I wanted to make a “weed killer” concoction with my sister one day when we were home alone. So we hoarded together every cleaning solution we could find in the house and poured it into a bucket. I have no idea how we didn’t end up in a hospital.

The test patch of grass we used it on never grew grass ever again.

Not a teen, but when I would have been 10 or so we lived out in the country, with a big eucalyptus tree in the back yard. I used to climb it a lot, and was real into building things like platforms and little (shoddy) tree houses. We also had a great trampoline, which I often used to get down out of the tree.

You might be able to see where this is going.

One day, I was up in the tree building a little ladder with the trampoline below me. I went to get down, dropped my hammer to the trampoline, and immediately followed it.

Time slowed, i witnessed it all happening in slow motion as I was thought “oh fuck, that was dumb” as the hammer hit the trampoline, i landed, and the hammer flew in a perfect arc and hit me in the forehead with the head of the hammer.

I stood there, stunned still for a second, and then immediately went “oh god, that could have been so much worse”. Thankfully I was completely fine!

Ate some acid in the freshman dorms at university. Dorm room was like 250 sq ft. Ended up walking around town for hours while out of my fucking mind and somehow did not get lost or robbed and made it home for a hot shower.

Great experience looking back on it, but probably not one of my better choices.

Recently a video tape surfaced of my friends and I tazing each other for fun.

Yes, I lived in bumfuck Florida at the time.

Edit: typo

Got head behind a semi truck and got caught by their dad and asked if he could drive me home 💀

when I was 14 I spent the night at my bff’s house and snuck out with her. took a taxi to the next town over to this guy’s house (he was probably in his 20s) to smoke weed. this was back before it was legal and he answered the door with a gun. neither of us knew him at all but despite all this we went in and partied with him without incident. dude was paranoid as hell tho

You can’t ask this and not give us yours.

But, I rode with drivers who had been smoking pot. Never did it myself, though.

Try playing super Mario Galaxy Wii while walking on a treadmill

So many, many choices.

I think my all-time dumbest came when I was about 22, so it doesn’t fit here. In my teens…probably driving drunk at speeds up to 100mph on the mountain roads up above Pasadena with the headlights off at night.

I had an overprotective mother and not too many friends that would dare invite me out to do stupid stuff (because they were scared to death of my mother).

The only stupid stuff was once I was careless with a match and nearly burned the house down (pure luck on that one).

Another thing that happened was not my doing, but I should have seen it coming. There was this guy who lived somewhere between the school and my house. One day he asked for a drive home. I dropped him off and he invited me in for tea (no jokes). I had some time so I went in, be polite and all. Well that little fuck put Clonazepam in the tea and I conked out. I was out for only a few minutes. I guess the stupid part is I got back in my car and drove home. Didn’t talk to that fella again and he pulled the same stunt on one of his other friends.

We’d pour out a few bottles of rubbing alcohol somewhere with a “streak” back to where we were standing and then light it on fire. Basically catches ablaze for 5-10 seconds and then it’s gone, with minimal to no burning to stuff underneath. So obviously it’s not safe exactly. But we’d pull pranks with it. “Bro your bike is on fire, look!!”

I had a car with a removable sunroof. In the summer my friends and I would drive around throwing water balloons at passing cars. I am super surprised we never caused an accident. The only time we ever almost saw consequences was hitting someone in a convertable and then chasing us. Never caught us though.

Honorable mention was not something I did. My friends and I were skating in a city park after dark, and the cops saw us. My friend decided to run, while the rest of walked back to another friend’s car. Since my friend ran, they searched the car. They managed to not find the .22 in the trunk because the owner of the car did not keep it any kind of tidy.

I started smoking, thinking that it would help me lose weight. I wasn’t able to quit until I was in my 40s.

I drove in reverse around a university satellite campus at night with my friends on the roof of the car. Definitely would not do it again.

I did a lot of dumb things with those friends that were much less dangerous, would do most of that again.