Remember when you were a kid? It was a carefree time that made you feel invincible no matter what you were doing (even if it wasn't exactly the safest thing).
When Reddit user u/wetw1lly asked, "What's the most dangerous thing you did as a child that you didn't realize was dangerous until you got older?" a ton of people shared their daring experiences.
We rounded up the most wacky and memorable answers to the thread. Check them out below:
1. "As a kid, I always used to catch different spiders and play with them in the hopes they'd bite me and I'd get Spider-Man powers."
2. "When I was very young, I found it much more convenient to clean my watercolor paintbrush with my mouth."
3. "Shooting Roman candles at each other using metal garbage can lids for shields. Looking back, we're pretty lucky we didn't die or set something on fire."
4. "Found an old building with stacks and stacks of asbestos tiles laying around. Thought breaking them Judo-chop style was really fun. Broke every last one of them."
5. "We used to throw lawn darts up over our heads and see who was the last to move out of their way."
6. "I wanted to be Mary Poppins. I took my dad's umbrella, held it aloft, and jumped off the roof of the woodshed. It was about 8 feet off the ground."
7. "Me and my sister would stay in the car when my mom went grocery shopping. We would put the car in neutral and let it roll backward, and one of us would get out and push it back. We didn't really realize that this could cause an accident in the parking lot."
8. "I climbed to the top of the tree in my backyard nearly every day. I don't know exactly what the height was, but it went well above the roof."
9. "Going down the school staircase sitting cross-legged on an upturned table."
10. "I stuck a key in a plug outlet once. It made a spark, the lights flickered, and it charred the key. And that outlet wasn't usable anymore. I'm thinking I dodged a big bullet."
11. "Jumping in hay bales. As a kid I grew up on a farm, and we kept stacks of hay that were between 50–100 feet high. We would jump between the stacks to see if we could, and take pictures of ourselves mid-flight."
12. "Running on quicksand. My cousin and I just thought that it was some really wet sand, but after about 10 minutes of us running over the valley of quicksand that had formed, a ranger came along and told us of how an old man and his dog had to be rescued from the quicksand early that morning and we were in great danger."
13. "Back in middle school, this game called speed bump that got pretty popular in my area. Kids would dress in dark clothes, meet up, and basically lay in the road when a car came. It was like a game of chicken. The last person to run away won. Parents found out. Lots of trouble. Luckily no one got hurt."
14. "My best friend and I would rollerblade really fast down a hill behind her house. The end of the hill forked out left and right, with blind corners on each side. It was incredibly dangerous and stupid. If a car turned the corner as we were flying down there, we wouldn't have been able to stop in time."
15. "Standing on thin ice. It was December, and I had just moved to New England from Florida when I discovered a swimming pool covered over with ice. It looked so neat! So then I went and stood on it. Afterward, when I told my mom, I doubt I'd ever seen her get so angry so fast. It's been 40-plus years, but thinking back on it still scares me."
16. "When I was younger I kayaked a lot. [One time] there was a bigger ship, and I got really closed to its propeller. I didn't realize the ship was moving backward toward me."
17. "When I was 8 years old, my father took us to the Grand Canyon. Apparently, I was walking back and forth across the top of a stone wall along a fairly steep drop."
18. "When I was very young, I had a play date with a neighborhood friend. While our moms were talking in the living room, my friend decided to take me up into his attic. He wanted to show me the stash of cotton candy he had discovered in the attic walls. When we got to the attic and I saw for myself, I thought this kid's parents were secretly cotton candy wizards from Candy Land."
19. Did you do something you had no idea was dangerous when you were a kiddo? Share it with us in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Did you do something you had no idea was dangerous when you were a kiddo? Share it with us in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.