What's new

Stupid Things You Did When You Were Young


Man, those streets are rough. Are they all paved or just the main drag?
I get my flex was lame...

The things I said about people I grew up with was true. The youngest people to be incarcerated at point of the mountain (at the time, names: Miguel Flores and Fred Edwards), people I grew up with being killed by each other and being killed by police. I'm glad you found that ammo for some jokes and a special moment. A good friend of mine growing up, Marcelino Delgado was killed by police as an adult. I don't know the details but I do know that he was a good person when I knew him. I have a funny story about the Arcade Theatre and when they were showing a double feature of Top Gun and Little Shop of Horrors, and then a better one from when they were showing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but I'll save those. The Arcade Theatre has been torn down, but from my understanding it was one of the last single screen theatres in the U.S. when it was torn down.

I'll invite you to join me as we have a walk through my old neighborhood. I'm actually really proud of it and think it's better than ever. Not like it was in the 80s and 90s. We can walk under I-80 where it crosses the Jordan River, there's a trail there now, when I grew up it was a place homeless people lived. Just on the other side is the historic Fisher Mansion.

We had some sheds in our back yard and we'd regularly find evidence that people had been sleeping in them. I'll show you that house and it's less than 50 yards from the Jordan River. We can walk over to the Handy Pantry which still exists afaik, which is across the street from Utah's first La Frontera (I don't think that location is still open.

I'm proud of where I grew up and I'm sure I can sound stupid talking about it because I don't think people outside of the old neighborhood understand what it is.


large.jpg


I guess the Handy Pantry has finally closed... RIP

828c6c62-da7b-45a0-9030-d2611a724413.JPG


Alright, google and **** is telling me I grew up in Poplar Grove. I know for a damn fact no one there called our neighborhood poplar grove. I know there was a park there called Poplar Grove Park, but none of us thought that defined our neighborhood.
 
Last edited:
So since you all didn't do any bad stuff I'll tell the lame stories of how I got 5 felonies as a juvenile. Not tonight, but episode one is "Accessory to Burglary" that I got when I was in 4th grade.

I've summarized these stories before but I'm going to try to tell them as more of a creative writing assignment then a police report. Full disclosure, I'm generally very honest and factual, but I'll take some artistic license, as I did in the OP.
 
I think I told this story years ago but it bears repeating at least as a cautionary tale to you younger guys.

Many years ago, my girlfriend at the time and her best friend were not getting along. In an effort to patch things up my girlfriend bought her friend an expensive watch for Christmas. Her friend (who was kind of a jerk) refused the gift on the grounds that it was an attempt to "buy back" their friendship. Of course my girlfriend was heartbroken by her response. In tears she gave me the watch and told me to throw it in the garbage - she never wanted to see it again.

So, instead of throwing the watch in the garbage, I gave it to a co-worker I was seeing on the side for Christmas. Flash forward to about a week later my company is having their annual holiday party. I go to the party with my girlfriend and my co-worker is there as well - and she's wearing the ****ing watch I gave her for Christmas.

My girlfriend immediately spots it and......the rest is too painful to relive.
 
So since you all didn't do any bad stuff I'll tell the lame stories of how I got 5 felonies as a juvenile. Not tonight, but episode one is "Accessory to Burglary" that I got when I was in 4th grade.

I've summarized these stories before but I'm going to try to tell them as more of a creative writing assignment then a police report. Full disclosure, I'm generally very honest and factual, but I'll take some artistic license, as I did in the OP.
Dude I told my cookie story. It brought back mounds of shame, I've been crying for 3 days. I need to hug my dad. :(
 
I dont know if i will put a list of my **** in here or not cause i just dont spend that much time posting on jazzfanz anymore but if i do the list would be long. Not sure i have that kind of time. I was an epic dumbass from about age 15 to 32 (my wife ended much of the dumbass behavior and my daughter ended what my wife couldnt. Havent even driven drunk once since my daughter was born. Im proud of that. Also havent whipped out my dick even once since she was born. Quite an accomplishment i know)


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
 
I have talked about this on here before but I made pipe bombs as a kid. Blew a few up near a river under an overpass and near some train tracks. A cop came down because he heard it and my friends took off, but he knew me and my family. Took me to my dad. That was a bad day. Didn't get arrested though. Could you imagine what would happen now? I would have been in juvie for the next 4 years if not charged as an adult.

Set off 200 bottle rockets at once in a 2 liter bottle with the top cut off. They barely fit. We thought it would be awesome to see that many in the sky at once and they were all the whistle-pop-bang kind with a loud bang and flash. So we set them up in the street, lit several fuses we had connected together and as we ran away someone bumped it and it fell over and nearly every single one went up the block under this lady's carport and exploded there, whistling popping banging. Lit it up like daytime under there. Would have been a viral video for sure. She was the lady on the block that always called the cops no matter what we were doing because we were hooligans out too late on the street. So yep, the cops come this time for sure. We all took off and they caught one of my friends, more or less scolded him and told him to stop it, then they left. That was crazy. It was about 1 in the morning so I couldn't imagine being woken up by that at 1 am. lol

We found out that about 4 houses on our street had car ports close enough to the next house that we could essentially use them as a pathway across all the homes. So we were playing some dumb kid game, capture the flag or something, and I got on one of the carports and started making my way across the rooftops, all dressed in black. Of course someone sees us all sneaking around in backyards and stuff, maybe 20 of us, and calls the cops. The house I am currently on was occupied by a counselor in the bishopric in our ward. He was an older guy but he was also still a scamp at heart. He came out because his wife heard something out back (me). He saw me on the roof and smiled, then got his lawn chair and sat in the driveway watching the kids running around and the cops on the street. They asked him if he had seen anyone and he said nope, no one. They rounded up about a dozen of us, called parents, all that jazz. I just stayed on the roof and the older guy just sat in his driveway, loving it the whole time. Finally everyone dispersed. He came back and said "I think you're all clear" and went inside. I made my way back to the street, found the few kids remaining who had been berated by the cops. They wanted to know how I got away from all of it. I just laughed. That was an awesome night, although looking back it was pretty stupid.

We went playing mailbox baseball out in the boonies. Took out maybe 6 or 8, in a friend's old car (like an early 70's olds or something, big boat of a car). There were about 10 of us in this stupid car. We were screaming and yelling and my friend was driving crazy. Couple kids fell out of the windows, **** like that going on. Someone got the bright idea to open the door and wipe out a garbage can. The first one was spectacular, went flying, garbage everywhere. Lights came on in the house as we drove away. We hit like 4 or 5 garbage cans, the kid in the front seat holding the door open straight arm to get a better explosion of trash. Until he hit the one can loaded with rocks or some ****. The door kicked back hard, broke the kids arm, pushed the bones through the skin. Holy hell it was chaotic, the first compound fracture I ever saw. We wrapped his arm in somebody's shirt and took him to the hospital and literally dropped him off. I feel very ****** about that, but we all thought we would get in trouble, so we let him walk into the ER bleeding and holding his broken arm alone. Stupid and a ****** thing to do.

That is good for now. No arrests for me, but a few run-ins. I was usually just doing dumb ****, borderline illegal, except of course the pipe bombs, which were obviously full-on illegal. A friend did get arrested for a stupid thing we did one other time I will post about later. But luckily I never did.
 
I dont know if i will put a list of my **** in here or not cause i just dont spend that much time posting on jazzfanz anymore but if i do the list would be long. Not sure i have that kind of time. I was an epic dumbass from about age 15 to 32 (my wife ended much of the dumbass behavior and my daughter ended what my wife couldnt. Havent even driven drunk once since my daughter was born. Im proud of that. Also havent whipped out my dick even once since she was born. Quite an accomplishment i know)


Sent from my iPad using JazzFanz mobile app
eh, just pick the best 2 or 3. No biggie.
 
When I was six or seven years old, my friend and I walked a few minutes through the woods and came to a fairly major road. A 50 mph road that goes directly to Seaside Heights/Park which is where Jersey Shore was filmed.

Once we got to the road, my friend dared me to roll the tire out into the road. It was a sunny summer Saturday morning, around 12 noon. Like any good boy, I took that dare and rolled it out. All I recall is some woman slamming on her breaks, half getting out of the car and yelling at me. We took off back through the woods and to his house. Returning to my house an hour or so later, my father somehow coaxed out of me what I had done. The consequence was not fun.
 
Last edited:
I was a fairly good student when I was young, started uni at 17 quickly discovered the student pub. The rest of the disaster follows really...
 
I spent a lot of my teen years as a beach bum. One day, I was sitting on rocks in Narragansett, RI, overlooking the Atlantic. Using a flat section of ledge as a backrest, both my legs stretched out completely in front of me. Enjoying the sun and surf. To my right, at some distance, I see a opossum walking in my direction. As she gets closer, I see she has 6-8 little babies clinging to her back.

Opossums are not known for good eyesight. So, I decide to do something really, really stupid. I decide to keep perfectly still, and let mama opossum, with all her babies, walk right up on my lap. Which she does. And she comes to a dead stop, on my lap. Her mouth, and teeth, less than 2 feet from my face. I know they’re not vicious, but it’s a mama with babies. Stupidity personified am I.

Still on my lap, she raises her head, and begins sniffing the air. And of course that can only be me she’s sniffing, and I stop breathing altogether. OMG, don’t move, don’t move! Without once having actually turned her head to look at me, she lowers her head, walks off my lap, and continues on her way. And I am allowed to leave with my face still intact.
 
Sometime in the 60’s. It was a summer when race riots were happening all over the country. Including in Providence that summer. That week.

I belonged to an Irish street gang, that hung out on summer nights at a street corner, in front of a pharmacy, upper East side of Providence. We were not a violent gang at all, mostly just hung out smoking joints and drinking beer. Some hijinks of course, but the police never considered us a real problem. The pharmacist might have, but we owned that corner.

To get to that corner, I had to drive through a tough black neighborhood. And stop to pick up a friend. In the back seat was my air rifle. Loved target practice with my air rifle. It was usually on the back seat. My friend, who had a strange concept of what constituted great practical jokes, took the rifle and pointed it out the window at an elderly black man walking down the street.

I flip out. “John, are you out of your mind!!”. We get to the street corner. Within minutes, seemed like every cop car in Providence was converging on that corner. And I’m hiding in the pharmacy. A large crowd grows, easily over 100 people, mostly black, watching all the cops surrounding my car, retrieving the air gun.

My friend is doubled over laughing.

What could I do, I had to walk out and man up. Yep, that’s my car, but nope, that’s not my rifle. One cop drives in front of me, one behind. We’re going to jail in downtown Providence. The cops pick up another guy, who the man my friend had pointed the rifle at, identified. Incorrectly, obviously. As we’re led away, there’s my friend, all but laying on the ground he’s laughing so hard. What a great practical joke! Not!

Before we arrive at the station, I have to get rid of grass and acid, both on my person. So, I make sure the cop in front is not looking at me in his rear view, and the cop behind is not looking right at me, and I successfully drop the drugs out the driver window in the middle of downtown Providence. Well, at least I got that right.

Now, we’re in separate cells. The guy who did nothing is balling his eyes out in the next cell, and promising revenge on me. The cops ask me who owns the rifle. They really admired it, I can still see them taking turns to admire it. And I come up with a story so dumb, I’m surprised the cops didn’t double over laughing as well.

“Well, I picked up a hitchhiker, didn’t know the guy, and he was carrying the rifle”.
“You picked up a stranger who was carrying a rifle?!” “Yeah, he ran away when you guys showed up, I guess he left the rifle in my car”.

That was my story. They let us go. As I’m walking out, the detective that questioned me says “you sure you don’t want this rifle?”. “On no, that’s not mine!”. Hated to lose that rifle, and I guess I didn’t have to, but no way could I change my dumb story at that point.
 
These are some great stories. I have more than I would like to admit. Provo was a boring place for me to live, I had to make it fun. Ill try to write a few later but the list goes on way too long and is way too recent. I am about to turn 40 next week, when does things you did when you were young stop?
 
These are some great stories. I have more than I would like to admit. Provo was a boring place for me to live, I had to make it fun. Ill try to write a few later but the list goes on way too long and is way too recent. I am about to turn 40 next week, when does things you did when you were young stop?
Well, I turn 52 this year and let me tell you the stupid **** I did last year when I was just 51.
 
Back
Top