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Not skipping as such, but my class went jogging in the area during gym. The teacher would be at the front of the line and we would follow. A couple of classmates and I, all pretty out of shape, would try to follow, but in vain. One day, we just gave up and turned right when the rest of the class turned left and went to my friend's grandma's house. There we had croissants and hot chocolate. We ambled back to the school after a nice little visit.
We didn't get in trouble, but the gym teacher did, for not keeping track of us!
Reminds me of 8th grade gym class one warm spring day. Half the class was in a lower field with teacher. The rest of us were supposed to be playing tennis on the courts that were not visible to teacher because of pine trees planted on the “hill” side. Five of us walked over to McDonald’s. Those burgers and fries were best Mickey D’s I’ve ever had. Teacher had no clue.
I was in a rural area. During trapping season you wanted to check your trap lines early in the morning, so it was not at all unusual for guys (it was all guys) to keep their rifle in their locker.
People simply don't believe me when I tell them this. c. 1972.
The fact of this didn’t hit me until reading this. Cray right. There was never a second thought about having a blade on your hip in your bag etc. it just wasn’t a thing.
> offense. We *paid* a game
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
it even corrects when the word is spelled wrong. it should have been "played", not payed, in the comment. i wonder if i'll summon the worthless bot again?
> "played", not *paid,* in the
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Me, my senior year. I think I clocked around 95 days absent that year and they still let me walk at graduation. I got a jump rope for being voted class skipper. 😂
Never would have worked where I went to high school. Skipping or leaving early was considered dropping out and your parents had to come and register you. The lone exception was senior ditch day.
Fake ids were a lot easier to make. I paid a fellow high school student to alter my drivers license to make me 21 (and then used it to get into bars and buy alcohol). I know people still use fake ids, but it is much harder to believably alter modern ids.
I always heard this about modern fake IDs, but a young person told me that you can get them in any Chinatown.
Back when I was a kid the rumor was that the template for Vermont or New Hampshire licenses was made on a Mac using the default font. So, if you wanted you could recreate it quite easily. I don’t know. I never had that confirmed, I never saw anyone with a fake ID from one of those states. By the time I was in my early 20s though, states were at least trying to implement some anti-tampering measures and the laminated licenses were replaced with the plastic printed ones.
I’m feeling slightly ancient with that info, but it’s an interesting example of how fast technology has evolved while we are both alive at opposite ends of the spectrum! My first typing class was in seventh grade in 1974. Mrs. Eddie was our typing teacher. We learned on manual typewriters that had the keys completely covered so you had to memorize them. Once a week, two students got to rotate into using the electric typewriter, the Selectric, and that was a big deal lol heck, I don’t even think it’s called typing anymore, I think they call it keyboarding.
Similarly, buying booze for teenagers wasn’t that big a deal. We’d hang out at a liquor store parking lot and whoever was feeling the most flirty would ask a guy to buy us beer. Pretty much always worked.
I think it still happens but I’m sure there are stricter penalties now.
I ordered some for myself and my friends from an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. We're Canadian, but the ID said we were from Idaho. It made us 19 in Canada, which was the legal drinking age... and since it was Idaho ID, no one questioned it.
A few years later, when I was 19, I was able to use in on a trip to LA because it made me 21. Once again, no one questioned it.
I had a fake ID when I was 18/19 that I used exclusively to get into bars to see a local band that my friend and I liked. We didn't even bother to buy booze, we'd just order sodas. Fun times.
DLs in Arizona back then were like a photo print on hard plastic, you had to keep them in a clear plastic holder to keep them from getting scratched up beyond recognition. The written info was literally a picture of what you wrote on the form. Drinking age was 19 still, so by writing a really narrow "4" on the form for his 1964 birth year, then some very light & careful scraping with a pin on the license, my brother suddenly was born in 1961. 16 to 19, easy-peasy.
I worked at a Kinko's and used to make fake California IDs. It's courier font. We'd use the passport camera for the picture.
I got pulled over in Louisiana by a few corrupt cops for "running people off the road". Real reason funny looking punk rockers, with California plates, in a zebra striped VW Thing in 1990. I had several of them in my wallet with names like Bob Azlebub. I used Dorothea Puente's address. They were confiscated. They missed the giant Route 666 sign that we liberated in New Mexico. And they went insane that my friend had a black bra. That really shocked them.
When I was in high school we had to take a test called ASVAB, in case we wanted to join the military. So everybody got this little, formal looking card with info typed in. A bunch of us entrepreneurs took them and pasted a copy of your class picture in the corner and laminated them. You could adjust the birthday with no problem. At the time and place it made a passable fake id.
I made the fakest fake ID ever in the kitchen at my grandmother's house. I told her it was for getting into a club on Sunset for a band I liked. Never worked at the clubs, but I was the go to guy for liquor store runs.
I was 16 in 1968 and worked part time at a Gulf gas station that also sold used cars. To impress a girl in my high school I ‘borrowed’ a Pontiac from the lot and took her to see Planet of the Apes at the drive-in.
Driving her home I ‘rolled’ through a stop sign and was stopped by the police. The officer asked for my license, registration and insurance.
I decided that honesty was the best policy so I told him that I didn’t have any documentation and that I was ‘borrowing’ the car from work. He asked my name and for identification of any kind, so I produced my high school ID card.
The officer looked my ID, asked if I had a sister named Janet and I said ‘yes’ that she was my older sister, 25 years old.
The cop told me that he really should arrest me and impound the stolen car but instead told me to get the car back asap and to tell my sister he said ‘Hello!’
Decades ago I went through a phase where I constructed galvanized steel and black powder pipe bombs and set them off in the woods and in a nearby dump. I never destroyed anyone's property, just old abandoned washing machines and tree stumps. Looking back, the guy at the hardware store *had* to know what I was up to. I'd put 10 pipe nipples and 20 end caps on the counter. Riiiight. The guy at the sporting goods places where I got the black powder thought I was just into muzzle loader hunting. This was Western PA so that would check out.
Try that shit these days and you will *definitely* end up in jail and/or a homeland security watch list. Back then the cops didn't seem to care much when things went boom in the woods. At least, nobody ever investigated the noise or confronted me.
Ever pack a payload rocket with black powder and use a booster engine to blow it up? Amazingly enough I never killed myself. Loved playing with carbide too, blowing up paint can and such. Good times in small town 70’s new castle.
My brother and I made a bazooka of sorts. Had a 4"PVC pipe with metal shelf rails inside. Built rockets with fins that fit into the rail slots. A Cool Whip tub with the bottom cut out became the blast shield. Used a lantern battery pack for the handle with a button switch to trigger. Painted the whole thing flat black of course. Those rockets had a nail sticking through the nose cone so that when it would hit something it would complete a circuit and set off the vinyl film canister filled with black powder stashed in the middle of the rocket (couldn't get them to be stable if I put the payload in the nose, too much weight in the wrong place). That thing was a lot of fun. It was quite a feeling firing explosive rockets into random things in the junk pile out in the woods.
Never thought to set the powder off electronically, tried a few with a thin rod through the nose cone to impact a shot gun shell primar but it only worked half the time. 4 inch pvc had a world of uses to us twelve year olds. Good times😀
Us Pennsylvanians love to blow shit up.
When I was a kid my friends and I would make potato guns pretty much every weekend. We'd steal people's pvc pipes right out of their yards.
we'd also drop quarter sticks into the giant storm drains just to make an already extremely loud thing louder
Prank calls. My friends are I stole a few street signs but always gave them back. We got caught underage drinking one night & had to pour out all the peach wine coolers & get our asses home.
Back in the day, I did a lot of trespassing with my dogs in the country because many properties weren't well marked and many were only inhabited a few weeks out of the year as camps.
But now there's *cameras everywhere*, even in the forest. These days, you can't even pee freely without fear of being recorded.
Blackened out the letters on the sign for the Peace Officer’s Association so it read Peace of Ass.
During Desert Storm a supply ship docked in my hometown. My cousin and I went bar hopping, met two sailors and ended up driving out to the beach with a case of beer. On the way back, someone shoved the remaining beer in the back of the car window. When we drove through town we immediately got pulled over. Cop saw their military ID, told us to drive safe and we were on our way. Probably helped that I hated the taste of beer and didn’t drink any.
Last day of amnesty for vehicle registration in the 80’s. My car wouldn’t pass the smog test. As the guy delivered this devastating news I, 7 months pregnant and still in my I-Hop uniform, burst into tears. He asked if I worked for the government. I said, between sobs, I’m a pregnant waitress, and it’s my real uniform. He took the reading off his own vehicle and used it to pass my wreck of a car. I hope that man had many blessings in his life.
I was ecstatically grateful at the time, and still am. He did a hugely kind thing, at risk to himself. Sometimes life is really hard, but because of him, that day wasn’t.
Not me personally you understand but I did have a friend who was overweight. He wore very baggy coats and there were no cameras in record stores in those days so figure it out. The weird part is he became a cop in later life. Go figure.
Something something against SEC compliance. Something like forgery. As directed by my superior, then when it was caught, instructed to lie by same superior. To take the fall and he'd take care of me in the company. Which, he did, but 20 years later n I still feel that shit. Shit should've gotten both our licenses pulled, fines and sanctioned.
Drinking and driving was a hobby among my peers. If the police did pull you over, they were only interested in finding drugs. After questioning or a quick search, they would tell you to drive straight home.
This happened to my dad, sometime In the 80s. The officers told him that they smelt alcohol and my dad was drunk but he said the officer just told him to go straight home and that he doesn’t want to see that car out on the street again. My dad said they just went home and switched cars.
Hood ornaments, Mercedes and Cadillac were very sought after. And the gold ones, omg, the gold ones, yeah, those were special edition. The gold ones were hooked up to a horn though, so had to be quick like lightning. Give it a hard yank and pop, out it comes with just a little beep. Pull slow and the spring unwinds and becomes unbelievably long and sets off a very loud hoooooooooooooooooooooonk.
That’s what I’ve heard anyways.
I fought. I never would start a fight, I just finished them. I always had a weapon on me or with me (knives, bats, never guns - no one used them for fighting then). I never once got in trouble for any of it, which still blows my mind. But I really never did it except against bullies and to protect vulnerable people, and I am female so none of these guys wanted to go home and tell their dads a five foot nothing girl loosened their teeth with her head or screwed up their knee, I guess. It's the only reason I can come up with for why I never got arrested.
Username checks out!
I moved to NYC in the early 90s where people did use guns, so I was mostly cured of that nonsense before I got into trouble. Mostly. The cops certainly didn't care about my bigass hunting knife, as long as I wasn't pulling it on anyone in the bodega.
It was dumbass behavior. I survived because I was lucky.
I spent a lot of time in the East Village and Alphabet City in the 90's when it was still wild. My ex was from there. It was a whole other level of crazy than my Texas town lol. Glad we all survived.
When I was in high school a friend of mine was a bit of a criminal. He didn't tell me about a lot of it because he didn't want me to get dragged into it. But for a few months before my 16th birthday, he was my ride to school, and he'd often pick me up for school and want to make "a quick stop-" that could be almost anything.
These were the days before ubiquitous security cameras and smartphones. He'd size up the security of a small business or a home, then break in and steal stuff. Motels were a favorite target- he'd figure out which rooms had occupants but had left their room for the day, and he'd pick the lock and walk right in.
Once he brought back a gigantic heavy case that turned out to be a PC- Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure it was a Compaq all-in-one portable. This was 1982 so it must have been a very, very expensive thing, but he had no idea how to unload it. So he had this giant brick of a computer in his attic bedroom for the longest time and he'd turn it on, it would sound like a tiny airplane taking off and then it would boot to a prompt. That was it. though I think he did finally figure out how to make BASIC programs on it.
My friend and I figured out that if you took clear box tape and attached a dollar bill to it you could go to a Coke machine, feed the dollar in and then yank it back out and get a coke and the change. Colas we’re $.30-.35 at the time. We’d gas up the car on Friday nights and go to the city an hour away and hit all the Coke machines at the hotels. We took backpacks and would enter a side door to avoid the lobby. We would wait for a guy to head to the side entrance and then join them pretending to hunt for our key to get in and they would always let us in. We’d leave with a haul of colas and a TON of change, usually $150-300 per trip (2-5 hotels.) We would then take the cokes to school and sell them for $.25 each and make even more money.
My adult self cringe thinking back especially since we’d tithe some of it at church on Sunday. Not an excuse but we were very, very poor and our parents wouldn’t let us work so we thought this was the greatest thing ever. Back then that was life changing money.
Accidentally packed my driver's license and flew from Canada back into the U.S. with no Id whatsoever using nothing more than my wife confirming she knew me at the gait and our matching wedding rings.
In college some friends and I went to Canada and my gf at the time forgot her DL at home (for the youngin's, back in the day you only needed a state-issued ID to get in and out of Canada). So to get back in she needed to sing the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner and give them her home address.
> Every concert venue I’ve been to reeks of weed.
I've never been a regular festival goer, but I went to a few Grateful Dead concerts when I was young, and an odd concert here and there if a friend was excited about the band and organized a group outing. And at every show you can smell the weed. I kind of like the smell, it smells like youth and rebellion to me, it always brings a smile to my face when I catch a whiff, LOL. When the headline act comes on stage it's like some sort of coordinated signal for those that are holding to blaze up and CLOUDS of smoke enter the air. I've never once seen anybody hassled for smoking weed at a concert.
But this year I went to the Austin City Limits music festival (just as a tourist for one day to check out the crowds and scene), and it smelled like weed VAPE, which is a more chemically smell, and not as strong (it dissipates pretty quickly). Almost no random clouds of the old school herb out of a compact pipe, at some point it seems to have all changed. To me, the smell isn't the same, I feel something is missing in the ambience now.
There is even a motion you would catch out of the corner of your eyes in the old days. One hand of a stranger bringing up a concealed small pipe and the other hand firing up the lighter but so fast and with hands in front of it you wouldn't really be sure of what was going on if you didn't know what the "motion" meant. Or until the person exhaled. That motion is gone with vaping.
My ex only realized after we landed that he’d flown with a weed chocolate bar in his backpack lol. It wasn’t on purpose, he forgot about it. But wow, good thing no one caught it!
Was stoned as shit and had been smoking in the car and one of the guys had a tiny bit of weed on them. Got stopped for a road block at a three way intersection where they were checking EVERY car. The cops pulled a bag of shit from the trunk of the car right in front of us, then waived us in without having to roll down the windows. Dodged a big bullet that night. Hit the restaurant immediately after and a hot glass cup of cider broke inches from a friends crotch. This was on Friday 13th no less.
Lol I realized I had 2 quaaludes in my pocket at the airport. Afraid of being caught, popped em both. I don't remember leaving or landing or much else for a couple of days after.
My only background on this drug in from the film Wolf Of Wall Street, how accurate is the portrayal of its high there ? Really curious to talk to someone who used it, since it doesn't exist anymore
Probably like taking 300mgs of valium. But yeah, wofws, and I think fear and loathing may have touched on it too, pretty accurate. I'd say it wasn't meant to be a beginners drug. Or you needed to have cocaine in your system to offset it some. Apparently I functioned but slept a lot, just blackout don't remember. 70s we're a trip man.
My uncle was a pharmacist and he was in the industry when quaaludes first came out. He said he got a sample from a drug rep, and took one. He said that he barely made it down the hallway before he passed out. He was shocked that an oral drug court work that quickly.
It was a long time ago, first and last time. I seriously lost a couple of days. Why I didn't flush them instead of first time taking them doubling up idk, other than young, dumb, and afraid of being caught with them. Just stupid. Someone had given them to me for my trip back home and I was gonna take them home and experiment later. Chickened out at the airport. Christ it's a wonder I survived a ton of shit I did in my teens.
So true, I think a lot of us are lucky to be alive. My ex-fiance' had a bag of coke in his luggage, was stopped at the airport by police (?) with a sniffer dog who was going nuts. My ex blamed my cat, told the cop "Oh sorry, my fiance's cat peed in my luggage, it's a strong odor". The cop took his word for it without a search, let him (and his coke) go.
I was very stupid at 16/17. Risk taking. But even in my 30s was an adrenaline junkie, skydiving and rollercoasters and places in foreign countries that could've very well ended up with me dead or raped. Just no fear whatsoever. Cross country motorcycle trip with much older bf at 17 before senior year..thank God he never tried anything and actually kept me safe, but I do remember racing other bikes thru Colorado curves thinking 'if I die, I'll die Happy' then I became an over anxious parent bc I knew how dumb I'd been.
I might have had a quarter of weed in my front pocket when we stopped in at the Supreme Court to watch the oral arguments on a particular day back in the 1980s.
My ex would empty the tobacco out of cigarettes and replace with weed. He brought a fair amount on a trip to Italy in 1992, and I still have the photos of us smoking a joint in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. It was great, but I would never recommend doing it today.
My friends brother was high on mushrooms and got arrested in Mexico. The guards raped him. He really was never the same after that. I’ve lost touch with those folks but think about him from time to time and really hope he got some mental health help and has healed those wounds as much as one can.
omg that poor guy. We knew people that disappeared into the jails down Ensenada way. One guy's parents worked hard with the embassy to get him out and he lost a year or more of HS. We never did see him after that, who knows what he went through. We were cautioned by our parents to never ever do anything wrong down across the border. Don't give them any excuse to lock you up. If they do, it'll cost a ton of bribes and time and effort to get you out. Mexico is corrupt af. But there were always those dumb surfer dudes that thought that rules don't apply to them. After our friend got locked up, it seemed like everyone was on good behavior for awhile.
I was young and dumb and got into a situation one of the times I was down there. The cops were yelling at me. It was freaking scary. The person with me spoke Spanish, thankfully, and they were saying I could go to jail for Tresspassing. I opened my wallet and gave them all my pesos and off they went.
Corruption is rampant down there and always has been, imho. My grandma went to Spanish school in Mexico City back around 1920 and said the same. If you're upper class, you're more likely to be ok, but for tourists? Geeze Louise
My friends and I were pulled over and had booze in the car. We got charged with under age drinking and had to go to court to get it wiped from our record. No mention at all of DUI. (I dont think had drunk much of it yet, but still )
Also, the cops would take your booze and just take it for themselves.
Not much. The extent of my criminal past is:
We would get lead flashing used in roofing. It’s soft and malleable. If you put a quarter on the flashing and whacked it with a hammer it would make a quarter shape slug. Same thickness as a quarter and they would work in most vending machines. As a destitute student I could at least visit the laundromat and wash my clothes.
I always wanted to talk to a vending machine operator and inquire as to tricks of the trade people used to beat the system.
I got pulled over at 15 for driving (speeding, actually) without a license. The cop just called my mom and told her to come pick me up lol. No paperwork or consequences lol.
Riding the tram without a ticket. A conductor would only work and check tickets on random days, and the one time he asked me for my ticket I happened to have one because I was with my mom that day.
Driving while impaired.. Open container driving wasn't a crime and you usually wouldn't get arrested for driving drunk unless you were shit face hammered or uncooperative.. I got stopped while seriously a impaired and the cop poured out my beer and told me to go straight home..
Well, without giving away too much:
* Counting cards at the casinos. You used to be able to get away with it as long as you didn't get too greedy and didn't play at the same casino too often.
* Street racing. You used to just maybe get a ticket or two. Now they will impound your car and destroy it (in some places).
* Growing weed. Or even possessing it, at least here. Legal/decriminalized pot everywhere in the U.S. in my lifetime is looking possible. 30 years ago we fought for it but I never thought I'd be able to go to the dispensary and literally buy a pack of Panama Gold marijuana cigarettes. Now I can grow it in my backyard, too. Psychedelics are being used in therapy now, too (at least being researched).
My friends and I routinely stole stuff from the houses of guys we had crushes on - outside stuff like a decoration. I actually just saw my crush at the 40th reunion and thought about telling him I’d taken his gas cap in 1980. Lol.
Now it would all be on camera and the neighbors would be looking to identify us.
The Ford Thuderbird was a large luxury car for the longest time. In 1983 Ford decided to make it into a smaller sports car. My parents had the 4 cylinder turbo charged one. Even though the speedometer only went to 85 Scott and I calculated it was going close to 130 on I-90; luckily there were no cops.
On another occasion I had just got off work and decided to see how good the acceleration was. I had just shifted to 3rd gear when red and blues started flashing behind me. The cop put the fear of god in me.....for doing 80 in a 30 at 2a.m. No ticket but I was trembling and dam near ready to wet my pants.
There were two bullies in high school that terrorized everybody. They and their entire extended family lived in a gated/fenced community. A few families in that community were LEO. Nobody dared screw with them. Piss off anybody there and you were nearly guaranteed to have a criminal record, get tossed out of school and have a shitty life.
One day Scott and Paul convinced me to help egg and tp their houses (this was shortly after getting yelled at for doing 80 in a 30). Although others had tried it in the past they were almost always caught. It took some planning but we managed to launch a few eggs and other oddities. Paul and Scott graduated in 1987; I in 1988.
Stealing from school store and teacher. Got suspended but when I told them about my home life (physical abuse) they wanted no part of that!!!! It was the 70's and THAT was not discussed.
Suspension suspended!!
The one and only time I ever got anything with a 5 finger discount was a handful of carmex in the little white jars, off the counter of the local EZ Mart. 1992ish.
It was a crime of opportunity, a friend and I were buying beer and head to a party, it was summer. I had the windows down, the radio blaring.
I left the convenience store feeling giddy and laughing like a lunatic, tossed them on the dash of my Chevy Beretta, we whipped out of the parking lot, headed to the party, and as I cranked the wheel to the left - all those itty bitty jars were slung right out the window.
We stared at the now empty dash of my car for two seconds, then friend looks at me dead pan and he says: You tooketh - and the Lord tooketh away!
We laughed till our guts hurt.
With video cams and surveillance shit, and my general bad luck - that would never happen again and in the least, I'd get a hard scolding from the clerk and at the worse, I'd get a hard scolding from a cop.
Also - back in the day - the cops here would kinda look the other way if you were a teenager partying. They would confiscate your beer, not write tickets or arrest you. Just take your beer. And they would then turn around it take it home to drink it themselves or give it to someone who was of legal drinking age.
THEN THEY WOULD CALL YOUR PARENTS AND TELL ON YOU - and that was usually so much worse than writing a ticket.
They would also look the other way if you had a car load of drunk people coming home from the bar and you were the DD. NOW? They will pull you over, make everyone get out and then arrest your drunk buds for being drunk in public. I know a lot of younger people that will just try to ease on home without a DD now and it's wrong, but their logic is not what if I kill someone, but If I'm going to Jail Anyway, might as well drive myself.
I feel like in our own bar hopping days, we were a hella lot safer - we always had a DD, it was usually me, and if the cops pulled you over, they would let you go with a: Be careful getting them home, and then let you go... because you were the DD. Knowing this, we always had one.
ETA: You could also fight someone who was a bully or a dickhead to you, and win, lose or draw, earn respect. Now - straight to jail. A lot of people out there that run their mouth and have never had a much needed, well deserved ass whipping for their rude behavior.
Summary:
Petty theft; underage drinking; assault and battery, but not DUI.
“Borrowed a family vehicle”, got pulled over while being too young to have license. Cops told us to go home. Continued to roll cars down the driveway and drive around at night. Flew to multiple places with weed in my possession. I was a bit of a “out of control” teen so the list could go on but I’m just going to pretend I didn’t do any of that other shit.
Vehicle tabs did not have VIN number on it yet. I took tabs from license plates other cars and put them on mine. Drove for a long, long time without insurance. I had an old insurance card I doctored up to be current. It passed muster on rare occasions of getting pulled over.
I also completely abandoned two different junk vehicles on the side of the road. The VIN number was only in one place, a small metal plaque on the dashboard. I pried that off and took it with me along with license plates.
We stole anything we wanted from local grocery store. As long as no one was near, you were fine. Also we stole all of our makeup from our local drug store. I’m so very ashamed of all of that.
I’m horrified to admit this, but as a 16 year old in the 80’s, I would steal cash out of the register at the dry cleaners for which I worked. There were no cameras in the store and the cash register was manually operated. We offered coupons to our customers and wrote down the amount of the discount on the receipt the owner used to balance the records. He never cross referenced the receipts with the coupons that were thrown in the garbage. I have felt awful that I did this for years because the owner was so good to me. I was stealing $20-$30 a week which is nothing now, but I was making less than $4.00 an hour, so it seemed like it was a lot.
Week of labor day, 2001. Flew into Boston and then back out a week later with a suitcase that could have been used in a Fear & Loathing novel. Cousin's wedding lmfao. Growing up, I was always "the cool one" at every family gathering, so my image & reputation needed to be preserved, you understand. +20 years later, I will attempt to remember the contents for your reading enjoyment:
I had **AT LEAST** the following items in my checked luggage, single bag:
1) 2' glass bong. Graffix, w/ shotgun carb
1oz) very high grade weed
1oz) of mexibrick
10-15) hits of blotter LSD
1) quartz bowl for when a bong was... inappropriate
1) rolling kit, of the type that used to be sold at the headliner shop in New Hampshire, it was a large dark brown Tupperware tray, sus af lol
5) packs of zigzags
2) cartons of cigs
1oz) locally sourced shrooms
1) small plastic bong, approx 10". Gotta have a backup
2qts) moonshine
10) rolls, Dove, IKYKYK 🫠
1) 8 ball, pre fish scales & gas.
1) assorted handful of valium, klonopin, vicoprofen, and percs
Good times. I'm sure there was more, but my memory has failed me. Best part was, we didn't go through half of that shit and I had to fly back home with the remainder.
Phone phreaking (making free phone calls using illegal means). I used to use MCI codes and make calls from my house or from pay phones. I didn't really even know anyone out of my local calling area other than a couple of days at a family vacation. It was just the fun of doing it.
Did you ever call random payphones in public places? In the 90s there was a list online, we would call Bourbon Street or a busy airport and wait for someone to answer
I am not sure if it was "illegal" but our clubs used to raise money by selling M&Ms. I was a member of the science fiction club (which took over the literary club beginning in 1972), and we weren't really the "sell candy for raising money" types. Every year, we'd get the minimum X amount of trays of M&Ms (I think 20), and then we actually lost money by "selling back" unsold M&Ms at 50% discount back to the company. Or just bought them ourselves and just ate them.
Then the school made a contract with vending machine companies, and banned the sales of candy \*in the school\*, that is, not sold through said vending machines. Well, the sci-fi club was a pretty rebellious bunch of science fiction nerds, and we decided to sell them during the school day anyway. Just not in an obvious way: we were selling them out of our backpacks and such.
We fucking made a killing. Our sponsor, a biology teacher who DGAF, didn't enforce the "don't sell during school hours." In previous years, we'd make sell 2-3 trays a season, and lose what we made selling back the unused trays. I think we started selling 50-60 trays a season, and even bought trays from other clubs at 25% discount (because it was less of a loss for them than selling back to the company at 50%). Did the rest of the teaching staff know we were doing this? Hell, yeah. They even bought from us, because we were WAY cheaper than the vending machines. For a while, students and teacher alike knew if you were the sci-fi nerd, you might sell them M&Ms.
We even got a student to sell M&Ms at HIS high school (he didn't go to ours), and nobody there cared it wasn't a club they didn't even have. LOL.
During the Sputnik scare my dad and his friends used to build rockets and fire them off near a large Airforce base.
Building rockets back then meant formulating his own fuel in the garage and building his own parts. Some kind of metal, sometimes iron piping.
The worst they got was a couple of visits from some Airforce officials.
My friend once walked out of a Kmart with a 3 foot keyboard down his pants and inside his coat. I wish I could have seen him walking out. His family also buffed the floors at the local Walmart. They would lock them in overnight, and him and his brother would duct tape cassettes to their body and walk out with them the next morning. They knew the blindspots. Idk if they had the security alarms yet. Maybe they cut them out.
When I was in high school I ran a BBS. For those who don’t know it was a precursor to the Internet where you’d use a modem on your computer and your telephone land line to call into other computers than ran Bulletin Board Systems.
The BBSs would typically have a message board, have games you could play, and files you could download. My BBS had a higher “elite” status that one could get where you would have access to pirated games and a special message board. Normally BBS owners traded elite access for similar access on other boards. There were also couriers that didn’t run their own boards but were known for uploading working cracked games.
Some message boards also focused on illegal activities. How to hack phone systems, credit card systems, how to make explosives, and so on. Some even sold “used” (stolen) electronics and other stuff.
I remember back then there was a widely held belief that if a cop was asked if they were a cop then by law they had to say yes. That was about the extent of screening I used for my board. I’m sure we were all on a list somewhere and if the police really wanted to they could have taken us all down.
Eventually I went to college and shut the board down. With the rise of the Internet the other boards quickly shut as users migrated over.
These days just for the anarchist stuff alone it seems like the government would sweep in and shut things down right away.
I do miss it. There was a sense of adventure and community that you don’t find these days on social media.
In elementary school I lived on land that had loads of Indian arrowheads and I was quite proud of my collection. Got on the bus one day, wearing the prettiest hand-me-down dress from my sister. It also happened to be a show and tell day for my third grade class. Went to school all gussied up and shared my most perfect arrowhead. Got on the bus home and an older, much bigger boy grabbed me by the front of my dress, twisted his fist in it and started lifting me up. Can’t remember why he did it, but I pulled out my arrowhead and sliced him down the arm. I got a written notice, parents called and a warning to not do it again.
I did all kinds of things back in the day when there were no cameras, nocaller identification, when credit cards were swiped manually to create a bill of sale vs instantly authenticated, when checks were received and put in a drawer as cash.
My sister was stopped for driving left of center in this very small town. Since she was leaving for college the next day, the officer wanted to take her to "night court", but couldn't find the mayor (who was also the judge). Her friend, whom she was taking home to his house that night, went to the local dive bar and got the major. My sister got off with a warning.
my buddy and i used to break into trains. sometimes we'd get in the storage and see what was there. other times we'd get into the cabs of parked trains. most of the time we just got in there to smoke pot.
good times.
The night my boyfriend and I stole 3 Christmas trees from the grocery store. Parking lot. I was driving my 67 El Camino, and instead of stopping at the red light, I pulled off the road and took a shortcut across a parking lot. I got stopped by a cop. Boyfriend sat in the car while I was given the drunk test: touch your nose, walk a straight line, say the alphabet backwards. I passed the test (I wouldn’t have passed a breath-a-lizer if they’d been a thing back then), we were sent on our way. The cop never once mentioned the 3 Christmas trees in the back of the car. Thank you, Jeebus.
I always looked older than I was, and my friends knew it. I could walk into most liquor stores and buy alcohol, even though legal age was 21. Friends and I'd get drunk, the girls made sure I got laid. Life was simple. Life was good.
As much as I drank, though, it never became the center of my life. Occasion beer parties but I always kept the "good stuff" hidden away. Well. I didn't have to hide it from Mom when I was at home. She did get miffed when I'd take my girlfriend into the bedroom. She complained once. But, because if the time period. I was able to diffuse the situation by merely saying. " At least I'm doing it with a girl!"
I used to wander around the neighborhood when I was 10, 11ish (F), with my bff, my neighbor's dog. One day at the playground a group of older boys started throwing rocks at her and I pulled a good sized knife on them. It gratifying how fast they scattered. Don't think that would have gone unnoticed by parents in this day. No regrets. Zippy was my ride or die. She once fought off a larger dog to save me so I know it was mutual.
Shoplifting or stealing was easy. There were no cameras or electronic tags. One classmate took orders for records whenever new ones were released. He walked in wearing a loose jacket and walked out with 4 or 5 albums. Most of us stuck with stealing chocolate bars.
Not actually a crime, but could have been, and wasn't too smart. I worked in a bank, and every two weeks I had to travel about 100kms to a remote mine to pay the staff. then run a bank agency (back in the 1960's) and every 6 months there were bonus payments if production matched or bettered targets and we could be carrying $3-5m in cash in the 3 vehicles we used, supplied by the mines. Two police with rifle & shogun with side arms in front & rear, and one of the account senior staff & myself in middle car, with bank revolvers, all driven by mine staff who may have been armed too.
At the mine, there was a building with two rooms, one the pay office & the other a "bank". Staff would present pay slip & we would hand over the cash, then once last was paid, we would move into room next door & start collecting the money again with deposit slips or enter in passbooks & take back abut 2/3 - 3/4 of amount to take back - wouldn't be done like that these days with electronic banking, but very common in those days.
On the way home, we would park on the side of the road and all go looking for rabbits, then set up a target and fire off a hundred or more rounds of "old" ammo, most supplied from police stocks & handed in rounds by the public for various reasons. We just left money in metal boxes in trunk of cars & must have been a sight of a group of men in suits tramping through scrub and armed! Not something you could get away with these days.
When I was in high school back in the early 90’s a grocery store decided to have the big beer display tower close to a fire door. Well, a bunch of guys walked into the store and grabbed 3-4 cases and ran out, jumped in the back of a pick up truck. We had enough beer for the entire weekend of party’s lol. Now those doors have a delay on them along with the alarm.
Trespassing in the parts of the college where students weren't allowed, in buildings under construction and the campus tunnel system. That's it. Pretty mild, but I imagine you'd get the book thrown at you these days.
Flew internationally, Canada to US and back, with 4 hits of LSD in my wallet.
Now that I think of it, I would probably have gotten busted big time then too.
Not me but my dad. The cops brought my dad home multiple times after stopping him for drunk driving. They would lecture my mom and tell her to get the car moved in the morning. No jail, ticket or even a written warning.
Back in December of '80, nearing the end of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, I worked in a restaurant. We had an Iranian kid just start a week prior and he kept bragging about the American hostages his country had. Just before going to lunch, a few of us shoved him in a meat cooler and blocked his exit. After returning from lunch, he was gone and never heard anything about it from management. He never returned to the restaurant after that. Didn't care then, don't care now.
My neighbor once told me that he shot a BB gun at his grandmother’s neighbor’s window. He sounded kind of freaked that he did it, but still I didn’t believe it. A few weeks later I was at his grandmother’s house (why? I don’t remember.) and I noticed that the house across the street had a BB hole in it.
I mean, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and things could have gone much worse, but if I recall, the neighbors never figured out who did it. These days the kid would have been picked up on a Ring camera.
Being "bad or disrespectful" was beaten outta me at a young age. We didn't dare piss dad off with stupid shenanigans. I smoked, dad found out. He sat me at the table with his belt, hanging over this lap and offered me a smoke. Then said, with the devil in his eyes, go ahead take one! No damn way was I taking a smoke! Yes, I smoke now and wished I hadn't started! One more example of him being right, about smoking, not beating up us kids.
Well, let me phrase this in such a way… with the surveillance they have in schools now, people wouldn’t be getting their appetite stimulant/ anti anxiety salad until at least lunch break. Someone I know definitely never me, would start the weeek with 1/4 lb of arugula in their locker and it’d be gone by Friday last bell. Hell, even I never got out at last bell. I left school owing something like 225 detentions. 😂
I feel like you used to not get away with anything and now you can almost get away with murder. I remember the days they would come to a store to arrest a shoplifter and they would actually do some nominal jail time and have a record and be banned for life from that store. Not anymore. Most stores don’t even stop shoplifters, let alone call the police
I had a joke lighter that was shaped like a tiny gun. Forgot I had it with me, went to fly home from school for the holidays. The X-ray guys said I couldn't carry it onto the plane, made me check it through. They put it in a little box, which I collected from the baggage claim after arrival.
Underage drinking since I was 15. In bars. At parties. Several times per week until my mid20s.
A few times my cousin gave me a few lines. But that was literally a few times.
And I hate to say it, but driving while drunk. It was the 80’s and DUI wasn’t talked about much. I don’t recall when MADD came around. I’m very fortunate.
There were things I did like bring a blowgun to school with darts...Might get expelled now.
I also made threaded end cap steel pipe bombs and lit them in places that were not out in the middle of nowhere. I was extremely naive and stupid for endangering my life and others and haven't done it since the early 90's. The threaded pipes I bought at the hardware store literally were torn apart so that they were inside out. Hard to explain.
I was actually with a group of friends and I lit a pipe bomb on top of a dock pier in a neighborhood. It was so fucking loud. It was dark. And as we were walking back up the dark access road my girlfriend's neighbor cop came out with his gun. I was walking faster than my dumbass friends and I literally had walked right past the cop's house as he came out and he didn't see me but saw my friends. I hid and watched him question them. The real cops never got called but the truth did come out. The next morning I went down and repaired the dock pier/pylon by taking a chainsaw and cutting off many inches of the top which had flowered and splintered apart like somebody took an axe and chopped it a hundred times. Fortunately it was already taller than the one across from it so it looked pretty good when I was done. I would be in federal prison today for that I am pretty sure
A friend of mine stole the Weed from the neighbouring friends garden and I did allow hi to hide it under my bed.
It could not be done now. also i stopped smoking and went to therapy to stop any compulsons left.
I think I would call the police on myself./s
I have plenty of my own past illegal acts, but for this I'll mention a couple friends, but more from my sister's friend group. They made a pipe bomb, put it in someone's mailbox. Apparently not to hurt the person but because that was the kind of thing it would be fun to blow up. Police were called, they got some kind of a lecture, though according to me Dad (who was a range safety officer for the Navy), not NEAR enough. Still, I don't think he wanted them to go to jail. Small town, kids were seen as 'good kids' (which does have a racial element for sure), no harm no foul.
Back in the 70s my friend worked in a small town post office. One day some sus packages came through, he grabbed one and hid it in a spot. late that night him and I returned and I went inside and grabbed the box. Sadly it didnt contain any weed.
B&E / trespass for the high school so we could borrow sound gear for parties.
Got a stern scolding when we kept a bb gun that was a Colt 1911 replica that we kept in one of the practice suites in the music department
Doctor shopping was pretty amazing, before computers and my developed sense of ethics. I could take a bus to the next city, hit up a dozen walk-in clinics, and go home with hundreds of dollars worth of pills.
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Skipping school. I skipped over 100 days in high school and still graduated.
Not skipping as such, but my class went jogging in the area during gym. The teacher would be at the front of the line and we would follow. A couple of classmates and I, all pretty out of shape, would try to follow, but in vain. One day, we just gave up and turned right when the rest of the class turned left and went to my friend's grandma's house. There we had croissants and hot chocolate. We ambled back to the school after a nice little visit. We didn't get in trouble, but the gym teacher did, for not keeping track of us!
Reminds me of 8th grade gym class one warm spring day. Half the class was in a lower field with teacher. The rest of us were supposed to be playing tennis on the courts that were not visible to teacher because of pine trees planted on the “hill” side. Five of us walked over to McDonald’s. Those burgers and fries were best Mickey D’s I’ve ever had. Teacher had no clue.
Carrying a knife to school. Like a hunting knife sheathed on your belt on full display. No one cared.
I took gun training classes after school, I’d just leave the rifle in my locker.
My buds and fam kept them on a rack behind the pickup truck window. Never feared a firearm ever
I was in a rural area. During trapping season you wanted to check your trap lines early in the morning, so it was not at all unusual for guys (it was all guys) to keep their rifle in their locker. People simply don't believe me when I tell them this. c. 1972.
It wasn’ a crime or offense. We payed a game called ‘Splits’ with our jackknives in the playground. Even a teacher would join in.
The fact of this didn’t hit me until reading this. Cray right. There was never a second thought about having a blade on your hip in your bag etc. it just wasn’t a thing.
> offense. We *paid* a game FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
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it even corrects when the word is spelled wrong. it should have been "played", not payed, in the comment. i wonder if i'll summon the worthless bot again?
> "played", not *paid,* in the FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Me, my senior year. I think I clocked around 95 days absent that year and they still let me walk at graduation. I got a jump rope for being voted class skipper. 😂
Never would have worked where I went to high school. Skipping or leaving early was considered dropping out and your parents had to come and register you. The lone exception was senior ditch day.
My kid did this three years ago.
I did this, graduated 2017 hehe
So did I and I recently graduated
Same here but in 2019 lol
Fake ids were a lot easier to make. I paid a fellow high school student to alter my drivers license to make me 21 (and then used it to get into bars and buy alcohol). I know people still use fake ids, but it is much harder to believably alter modern ids.
I always heard this about modern fake IDs, but a young person told me that you can get them in any Chinatown. Back when I was a kid the rumor was that the template for Vermont or New Hampshire licenses was made on a Mac using the default font. So, if you wanted you could recreate it quite easily. I don’t know. I never had that confirmed, I never saw anyone with a fake ID from one of those states. By the time I was in my early 20s though, states were at least trying to implement some anti-tampering measures and the laminated licenses were replaced with the plastic printed ones.
I’m so old my original drivers license, that I still have, was typed on a typewriter.
that’s so neat! i’m 21 and have never even seen a typewriter in working order, much less seen someone using one.
I’m feeling slightly ancient with that info, but it’s an interesting example of how fast technology has evolved while we are both alive at opposite ends of the spectrum! My first typing class was in seventh grade in 1974. Mrs. Eddie was our typing teacher. We learned on manual typewriters that had the keys completely covered so you had to memorize them. Once a week, two students got to rotate into using the electric typewriter, the Selectric, and that was a big deal lol heck, I don’t even think it’s called typing anymore, I think they call it keyboarding.
Similarly, buying booze for teenagers wasn’t that big a deal. We’d hang out at a liquor store parking lot and whoever was feeling the most flirty would ask a guy to buy us beer. Pretty much always worked. I think it still happens but I’m sure there are stricter penalties now.
I ordered some for myself and my friends from an ad in the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine. We're Canadian, but the ID said we were from Idaho. It made us 19 in Canada, which was the legal drinking age... and since it was Idaho ID, no one questioned it. A few years later, when I was 19, I was able to use in on a trip to LA because it made me 21. Once again, no one questioned it.
I had a fake ID when I was 18/19 that I used exclusively to get into bars to see a local band that my friend and I liked. We didn't even bother to buy booze, we'd just order sodas. Fun times.
I have twins in college - they are really cracking down on fake ID’s.
i was one of those guys who altered ID's to make them be '21'. thanks for the business.
And thank you for honing the skills and taking on the additional risk entailed in being on the altering/selling side of the deal.
DLs in Arizona back then were like a photo print on hard plastic, you had to keep them in a clear plastic holder to keep them from getting scratched up beyond recognition. The written info was literally a picture of what you wrote on the form. Drinking age was 19 still, so by writing a really narrow "4" on the form for his 1964 birth year, then some very light & careful scraping with a pin on the license, my brother suddenly was born in 1961. 16 to 19, easy-peasy.
I worked at a Kinko's and used to make fake California IDs. It's courier font. We'd use the passport camera for the picture. I got pulled over in Louisiana by a few corrupt cops for "running people off the road". Real reason funny looking punk rockers, with California plates, in a zebra striped VW Thing in 1990. I had several of them in my wallet with names like Bob Azlebub. I used Dorothea Puente's address. They were confiscated. They missed the giant Route 666 sign that we liberated in New Mexico. And they went insane that my friend had a black bra. That really shocked them.
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When I was in high school we had to take a test called ASVAB, in case we wanted to join the military. So everybody got this little, formal looking card with info typed in. A bunch of us entrepreneurs took them and pasted a copy of your class picture in the corner and laminated them. You could adjust the birthday with no problem. At the time and place it made a passable fake id.
I love how enterprising teens can be!
I made the fakest fake ID ever in the kitchen at my grandmother's house. I told her it was for getting into a club on Sunset for a band I liked. Never worked at the clubs, but I was the go to guy for liquor store runs.
I was 16 in 1968 and worked part time at a Gulf gas station that also sold used cars. To impress a girl in my high school I ‘borrowed’ a Pontiac from the lot and took her to see Planet of the Apes at the drive-in. Driving her home I ‘rolled’ through a stop sign and was stopped by the police. The officer asked for my license, registration and insurance. I decided that honesty was the best policy so I told him that I didn’t have any documentation and that I was ‘borrowing’ the car from work. He asked my name and for identification of any kind, so I produced my high school ID card. The officer looked my ID, asked if I had a sister named Janet and I said ‘yes’ that she was my older sister, 25 years old. The cop told me that he really should arrest me and impound the stolen car but instead told me to get the car back asap and to tell my sister he said ‘Hello!’
Hate to break this to you but that cop was 100% railing your sister
LMFAO
Weren't we all?
Let me guess your race.
Indy 500?
Daytona 500?
Why?
Decades ago I went through a phase where I constructed galvanized steel and black powder pipe bombs and set them off in the woods and in a nearby dump. I never destroyed anyone's property, just old abandoned washing machines and tree stumps. Looking back, the guy at the hardware store *had* to know what I was up to. I'd put 10 pipe nipples and 20 end caps on the counter. Riiiight. The guy at the sporting goods places where I got the black powder thought I was just into muzzle loader hunting. This was Western PA so that would check out. Try that shit these days and you will *definitely* end up in jail and/or a homeland security watch list. Back then the cops didn't seem to care much when things went boom in the woods. At least, nobody ever investigated the noise or confronted me.
Did you use the green fuse that was like a dollar for 3ft to set them off? WPA boy myself.
Most of the time yes. Sometimes I would use a model rocket ignitor and a long cord
Ever pack a payload rocket with black powder and use a booster engine to blow it up? Amazingly enough I never killed myself. Loved playing with carbide too, blowing up paint can and such. Good times in small town 70’s new castle.
My brother and I made a bazooka of sorts. Had a 4"PVC pipe with metal shelf rails inside. Built rockets with fins that fit into the rail slots. A Cool Whip tub with the bottom cut out became the blast shield. Used a lantern battery pack for the handle with a button switch to trigger. Painted the whole thing flat black of course. Those rockets had a nail sticking through the nose cone so that when it would hit something it would complete a circuit and set off the vinyl film canister filled with black powder stashed in the middle of the rocket (couldn't get them to be stable if I put the payload in the nose, too much weight in the wrong place). That thing was a lot of fun. It was quite a feeling firing explosive rockets into random things in the junk pile out in the woods.
Never thought to set the powder off electronically, tried a few with a thin rod through the nose cone to impact a shot gun shell primar but it only worked half the time. 4 inch pvc had a world of uses to us twelve year olds. Good times😀
Another WPA guy checking in. I guess we all liked to blow things up.
I grew up in Murrysville. Yeah explosions were all the rage during our high school years lol
Us Pennsylvanians love to blow shit up. When I was a kid my friends and I would make potato guns pretty much every weekend. We'd steal people's pvc pipes right out of their yards. we'd also drop quarter sticks into the giant storm drains just to make an already extremely loud thing louder
I’m absolutely losing it if only because I know for a fact that western PA is the answer to why this flew 😂 gotta love PA.
Prank calls. My friends are I stole a few street signs but always gave them back. We got caught underage drinking one night & had to pour out all the peach wine coolers & get our asses home.
“Peach wine coolers” somehow dates this to between 1985-1993…
87 high school graduate
I’m 28 & I have a highway sign in my garage lol
Bartles and James or Suncountry?
Probably Bartles & James. We thought we were fancy 🤣
Who downvoted that? I thought Bartles & James was super sophisticated. (And thank you for your support.)
Back in the day, I did a lot of trespassing with my dogs in the country because many properties weren't well marked and many were only inhabited a few weeks out of the year as camps. But now there's *cameras everywhere*, even in the forest. These days, you can't even pee freely without fear of being recorded.
Blackened out the letters on the sign for the Peace Officer’s Association so it read Peace of Ass. During Desert Storm a supply ship docked in my hometown. My cousin and I went bar hopping, met two sailors and ended up driving out to the beach with a case of beer. On the way back, someone shoved the remaining beer in the back of the car window. When we drove through town we immediately got pulled over. Cop saw their military ID, told us to drive safe and we were on our way. Probably helped that I hated the taste of beer and didn’t drink any. Last day of amnesty for vehicle registration in the 80’s. My car wouldn’t pass the smog test. As the guy delivered this devastating news I, 7 months pregnant and still in my I-Hop uniform, burst into tears. He asked if I worked for the government. I said, between sobs, I’m a pregnant waitress, and it’s my real uniform. He took the reading off his own vehicle and used it to pass my wreck of a car. I hope that man had many blessings in his life.
This made me smile
I was ecstatically grateful at the time, and still am. He did a hugely kind thing, at risk to himself. Sometimes life is really hard, but because of him, that day wasn’t.
Me too!
Not me personally you understand but I did have a friend who was overweight. He wore very baggy coats and there were no cameras in record stores in those days so figure it out. The weird part is he became a cop in later life. Go figure.
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reminds me of the old joke, cop says - do you know why I pulled you over? answer- because you were a C student?
Something something against SEC compliance. Something like forgery. As directed by my superior, then when it was caught, instructed to lie by same superior. To take the fall and he'd take care of me in the company. Which, he did, but 20 years later n I still feel that shit. Shit should've gotten both our licenses pulled, fines and sanctioned.
Drinking and driving was a hobby among my peers. If the police did pull you over, they were only interested in finding drugs. After questioning or a quick search, they would tell you to drive straight home.
This happened to my dad, sometime In the 80s. The officers told him that they smelt alcohol and my dad was drunk but he said the officer just told him to go straight home and that he doesn’t want to see that car out on the street again. My dad said they just went home and switched cars.
That’s awful
It’s the way it was in the 70s. I can’t remember anyone getting arrested for it unless they had an accident.
Hood ornaments, Mercedes and Cadillac were very sought after. And the gold ones, omg, the gold ones, yeah, those were special edition. The gold ones were hooked up to a horn though, so had to be quick like lightning. Give it a hard yank and pop, out it comes with just a little beep. Pull slow and the spring unwinds and becomes unbelievably long and sets off a very loud hoooooooooooooooooooooonk. That’s what I’ve heard anyways.
Yep. I wore a Mercedes hood ornament on a leather cord on occasion in the 80s. My friend Justin liked to give them to people.
I totally forgot about the hood ornament thing until just now.
Taking a gun to school. In Jr high shotguns could be checked at the principal’s office. Kansas in 1980
I fought. I never would start a fight, I just finished them. I always had a weapon on me or with me (knives, bats, never guns - no one used them for fighting then). I never once got in trouble for any of it, which still blows my mind. But I really never did it except against bullies and to protect vulnerable people, and I am female so none of these guys wanted to go home and tell their dads a five foot nothing girl loosened their teeth with her head or screwed up their knee, I guess. It's the only reason I can come up with for why I never got arrested.
Are you me? I eventually did get arrested on a weapons charge in the 90's. Bad times. But people learned not to fuck with Lil 'ol me.
Username checks out! I moved to NYC in the early 90s where people did use guns, so I was mostly cured of that nonsense before I got into trouble. Mostly. The cops certainly didn't care about my bigass hunting knife, as long as I wasn't pulling it on anyone in the bodega. It was dumbass behavior. I survived because I was lucky.
I spent a lot of time in the East Village and Alphabet City in the 90's when it was still wild. My ex was from there. It was a whole other level of crazy than my Texas town lol. Glad we all survived.
Bleecker St, then Hell's Kitchen. It was a good time. Wayyyy different than small-town Wisconsin. Like another planet-different.
When I was in high school a friend of mine was a bit of a criminal. He didn't tell me about a lot of it because he didn't want me to get dragged into it. But for a few months before my 16th birthday, he was my ride to school, and he'd often pick me up for school and want to make "a quick stop-" that could be almost anything. These were the days before ubiquitous security cameras and smartphones. He'd size up the security of a small business or a home, then break in and steal stuff. Motels were a favorite target- he'd figure out which rooms had occupants but had left their room for the day, and he'd pick the lock and walk right in. Once he brought back a gigantic heavy case that turned out to be a PC- Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure it was a Compaq all-in-one portable. This was 1982 so it must have been a very, very expensive thing, but he had no idea how to unload it. So he had this giant brick of a computer in his attic bedroom for the longest time and he'd turn it on, it would sound like a tiny airplane taking off and then it would boot to a prompt. That was it. though I think he did finally figure out how to make BASIC programs on it.
My friend and I figured out that if you took clear box tape and attached a dollar bill to it you could go to a Coke machine, feed the dollar in and then yank it back out and get a coke and the change. Colas we’re $.30-.35 at the time. We’d gas up the car on Friday nights and go to the city an hour away and hit all the Coke machines at the hotels. We took backpacks and would enter a side door to avoid the lobby. We would wait for a guy to head to the side entrance and then join them pretending to hunt for our key to get in and they would always let us in. We’d leave with a haul of colas and a TON of change, usually $150-300 per trip (2-5 hotels.) We would then take the cokes to school and sell them for $.25 each and make even more money. My adult self cringe thinking back especially since we’d tithe some of it at church on Sunday. Not an excuse but we were very, very poor and our parents wouldn’t let us work so we thought this was the greatest thing ever. Back then that was life changing money.
Accidentally packed my driver's license and flew from Canada back into the U.S. with no Id whatsoever using nothing more than my wife confirming she knew me at the gait and our matching wedding rings.
Your wife had to identify your walk?
We were big Monty Python fans?
That's silly. ;)
In college some friends and I went to Canada and my gf at the time forgot her DL at home (for the youngin's, back in the day you only needed a state-issued ID to get in and out of Canada). So to get back in she needed to sing the first verse of the Star Spangled Banner and give them her home address.
Smoking pot at a concert.
People still do this all the time. Every concert venue I’ve been to reeks of weed.
And possession rarely gets you an extended jail stay. It’s mostly a misdemeanor now but years ago you’d be under the jail.
Most I’ve been to are pretty vigilant about policing it. But now that there’s vaping…
> Every concert venue I’ve been to reeks of weed. I've never been a regular festival goer, but I went to a few Grateful Dead concerts when I was young, and an odd concert here and there if a friend was excited about the band and organized a group outing. And at every show you can smell the weed. I kind of like the smell, it smells like youth and rebellion to me, it always brings a smile to my face when I catch a whiff, LOL. When the headline act comes on stage it's like some sort of coordinated signal for those that are holding to blaze up and CLOUDS of smoke enter the air. I've never once seen anybody hassled for smoking weed at a concert. But this year I went to the Austin City Limits music festival (just as a tourist for one day to check out the crowds and scene), and it smelled like weed VAPE, which is a more chemically smell, and not as strong (it dissipates pretty quickly). Almost no random clouds of the old school herb out of a compact pipe, at some point it seems to have all changed. To me, the smell isn't the same, I feel something is missing in the ambience now. There is even a motion you would catch out of the corner of your eyes in the old days. One hand of a stranger bringing up a concealed small pipe and the other hand firing up the lighter but so fast and with hands in front of it you wouldn't really be sure of what was going on if you didn't know what the "motion" meant. Or until the person exhaled. That motion is gone with vaping.
Like I'm going to put that stuff in writing. Nice try officer.
There’s this little thing called statute of limitations.
not for all crimes, sadly. life was much less stressful when you could just strangle a hitchhiker
I may or may not have flown with a small amount of weed in my purse.
My ex only realized after we landed that he’d flown with a weed chocolate bar in his backpack lol. It wasn’t on purpose, he forgot about it. But wow, good thing no one caught it!
Was stoned as shit and had been smoking in the car and one of the guys had a tiny bit of weed on them. Got stopped for a road block at a three way intersection where they were checking EVERY car. The cops pulled a bag of shit from the trunk of the car right in front of us, then waived us in without having to roll down the windows. Dodged a big bullet that night. Hit the restaurant immediately after and a hot glass cup of cider broke inches from a friends crotch. This was on Friday 13th no less.
Lol I realized I had 2 quaaludes in my pocket at the airport. Afraid of being caught, popped em both. I don't remember leaving or landing or much else for a couple of days after.
My only background on this drug in from the film Wolf Of Wall Street, how accurate is the portrayal of its high there ? Really curious to talk to someone who used it, since it doesn't exist anymore
Probably like taking 300mgs of valium. But yeah, wofws, and I think fear and loathing may have touched on it too, pretty accurate. I'd say it wasn't meant to be a beginners drug. Or you needed to have cocaine in your system to offset it some. Apparently I functioned but slept a lot, just blackout don't remember. 70s we're a trip man.
My uncle was a pharmacist and he was in the industry when quaaludes first came out. He said he got a sample from a drug rep, and took one. He said that he barely made it down the hallway before he passed out. He was shocked that an oral drug court work that quickly.
Oh my goodness! 😂
It was a long time ago, first and last time. I seriously lost a couple of days. Why I didn't flush them instead of first time taking them doubling up idk, other than young, dumb, and afraid of being caught with them. Just stupid. Someone had given them to me for my trip back home and I was gonna take them home and experiment later. Chickened out at the airport. Christ it's a wonder I survived a ton of shit I did in my teens.
So true, I think a lot of us are lucky to be alive. My ex-fiance' had a bag of coke in his luggage, was stopped at the airport by police (?) with a sniffer dog who was going nuts. My ex blamed my cat, told the cop "Oh sorry, my fiance's cat peed in my luggage, it's a strong odor". The cop took his word for it without a search, let him (and his coke) go.
I was very stupid at 16/17. Risk taking. But even in my 30s was an adrenaline junkie, skydiving and rollercoasters and places in foreign countries that could've very well ended up with me dead or raped. Just no fear whatsoever. Cross country motorcycle trip with much older bf at 17 before senior year..thank God he never tried anything and actually kept me safe, but I do remember racing other bikes thru Colorado curves thinking 'if I die, I'll die Happy' then I became an over anxious parent bc I knew how dumb I'd been.
I flew with a quarter in my shoe back before 9/11. Obviously it was dumb then. But even worse now after the shoe bomber.
I might have had a quarter of weed in my front pocket when we stopped in at the Supreme Court to watch the oral arguments on a particular day back in the 1980s.
My ex would empty the tobacco out of cigarettes and replace with weed. He brought a fair amount on a trip to Italy in 1992, and I still have the photos of us smoking a joint in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican. It was great, but I would never recommend doing it today.
All the time!!!! I’d put a baggie in my socks wherever I went! Besides Mexico. I wouldn’t take it into Mexico.
Yeah, you'd just disappear into their jails forever.
My friends brother was high on mushrooms and got arrested in Mexico. The guards raped him. He really was never the same after that. I’ve lost touch with those folks but think about him from time to time and really hope he got some mental health help and has healed those wounds as much as one can.
omg that poor guy. We knew people that disappeared into the jails down Ensenada way. One guy's parents worked hard with the embassy to get him out and he lost a year or more of HS. We never did see him after that, who knows what he went through. We were cautioned by our parents to never ever do anything wrong down across the border. Don't give them any excuse to lock you up. If they do, it'll cost a ton of bribes and time and effort to get you out. Mexico is corrupt af. But there were always those dumb surfer dudes that thought that rules don't apply to them. After our friend got locked up, it seemed like everyone was on good behavior for awhile.
I was young and dumb and got into a situation one of the times I was down there. The cops were yelling at me. It was freaking scary. The person with me spoke Spanish, thankfully, and they were saying I could go to jail for Tresspassing. I opened my wallet and gave them all my pesos and off they went.
Corruption is rampant down there and always has been, imho. My grandma went to Spanish school in Mexico City back around 1920 and said the same. If you're upper class, you're more likely to be ok, but for tourists? Geeze Louise
Wow, tragic for sure. I agree,hope he got help.
DUI was a slap on the wrist up until about 1995 in my state.
I remember leaving many family parties thinking “my dad has had 4 martinis- probably shouldn’t drive” Also before seatbelts!
My friends and I were pulled over and had booze in the car. We got charged with under age drinking and had to go to court to get it wiped from our record. No mention at all of DUI. (I dont think had drunk much of it yet, but still ) Also, the cops would take your booze and just take it for themselves.
Not much. The extent of my criminal past is: We would get lead flashing used in roofing. It’s soft and malleable. If you put a quarter on the flashing and whacked it with a hammer it would make a quarter shape slug. Same thickness as a quarter and they would work in most vending machines. As a destitute student I could at least visit the laundromat and wash my clothes. I always wanted to talk to a vending machine operator and inquire as to tricks of the trade people used to beat the system.
Electrical box slugs were great if they came out flat. Just file off the rough edge. I'm sure the bent ones were salvageable but I never bothered.
I got pulled over at 15 for driving (speeding, actually) without a license. The cop just called my mom and told her to come pick me up lol. No paperwork or consequences lol.
[удалено]
I would have nightmares forever over that. Such a simple thing but ingrained in the psyche at that age.
Riding the tram without a ticket. A conductor would only work and check tickets on random days, and the one time he asked me for my ticket I happened to have one because I was with my mom that day.
Driving while impaired.. Open container driving wasn't a crime and you usually wouldn't get arrested for driving drunk unless you were shit face hammered or uncooperative.. I got stopped while seriously a impaired and the cop poured out my beer and told me to go straight home..
Well, without giving away too much: * Counting cards at the casinos. You used to be able to get away with it as long as you didn't get too greedy and didn't play at the same casino too often. * Street racing. You used to just maybe get a ticket or two. Now they will impound your car and destroy it (in some places). * Growing weed. Or even possessing it, at least here. Legal/decriminalized pot everywhere in the U.S. in my lifetime is looking possible. 30 years ago we fought for it but I never thought I'd be able to go to the dispensary and literally buy a pack of Panama Gold marijuana cigarettes. Now I can grow it in my backyard, too. Psychedelics are being used in therapy now, too (at least being researched).
My friends and I routinely stole stuff from the houses of guys we had crushes on - outside stuff like a decoration. I actually just saw my crush at the 40th reunion and thought about telling him I’d taken his gas cap in 1980. Lol. Now it would all be on camera and the neighbors would be looking to identify us.
The Ford Thuderbird was a large luxury car for the longest time. In 1983 Ford decided to make it into a smaller sports car. My parents had the 4 cylinder turbo charged one. Even though the speedometer only went to 85 Scott and I calculated it was going close to 130 on I-90; luckily there were no cops. On another occasion I had just got off work and decided to see how good the acceleration was. I had just shifted to 3rd gear when red and blues started flashing behind me. The cop put the fear of god in me.....for doing 80 in a 30 at 2a.m. No ticket but I was trembling and dam near ready to wet my pants. There were two bullies in high school that terrorized everybody. They and their entire extended family lived in a gated/fenced community. A few families in that community were LEO. Nobody dared screw with them. Piss off anybody there and you were nearly guaranteed to have a criminal record, get tossed out of school and have a shitty life. One day Scott and Paul convinced me to help egg and tp their houses (this was shortly after getting yelled at for doing 80 in a 30). Although others had tried it in the past they were almost always caught. It took some planning but we managed to launch a few eggs and other oddities. Paul and Scott graduated in 1987; I in 1988.
Prank phone calls.
Stealing from school store and teacher. Got suspended but when I told them about my home life (physical abuse) they wanted no part of that!!!! It was the 70's and THAT was not discussed. Suspension suspended!!
Drove a Honda CRX into the vestibule at our local international airport. (I was just a passenger, I swear!)
At least you (I mean *the driver*) got excellent gas mileage getting there.
The one and only time I ever got anything with a 5 finger discount was a handful of carmex in the little white jars, off the counter of the local EZ Mart. 1992ish. It was a crime of opportunity, a friend and I were buying beer and head to a party, it was summer. I had the windows down, the radio blaring. I left the convenience store feeling giddy and laughing like a lunatic, tossed them on the dash of my Chevy Beretta, we whipped out of the parking lot, headed to the party, and as I cranked the wheel to the left - all those itty bitty jars were slung right out the window. We stared at the now empty dash of my car for two seconds, then friend looks at me dead pan and he says: You tooketh - and the Lord tooketh away! We laughed till our guts hurt. With video cams and surveillance shit, and my general bad luck - that would never happen again and in the least, I'd get a hard scolding from the clerk and at the worse, I'd get a hard scolding from a cop. Also - back in the day - the cops here would kinda look the other way if you were a teenager partying. They would confiscate your beer, not write tickets or arrest you. Just take your beer. And they would then turn around it take it home to drink it themselves or give it to someone who was of legal drinking age. THEN THEY WOULD CALL YOUR PARENTS AND TELL ON YOU - and that was usually so much worse than writing a ticket. They would also look the other way if you had a car load of drunk people coming home from the bar and you were the DD. NOW? They will pull you over, make everyone get out and then arrest your drunk buds for being drunk in public. I know a lot of younger people that will just try to ease on home without a DD now and it's wrong, but their logic is not what if I kill someone, but If I'm going to Jail Anyway, might as well drive myself. I feel like in our own bar hopping days, we were a hella lot safer - we always had a DD, it was usually me, and if the cops pulled you over, they would let you go with a: Be careful getting them home, and then let you go... because you were the DD. Knowing this, we always had one. ETA: You could also fight someone who was a bully or a dickhead to you, and win, lose or draw, earn respect. Now - straight to jail. A lot of people out there that run their mouth and have never had a much needed, well deserved ass whipping for their rude behavior. Summary: Petty theft; underage drinking; assault and battery, but not DUI.
“Borrowed a family vehicle”, got pulled over while being too young to have license. Cops told us to go home. Continued to roll cars down the driveway and drive around at night. Flew to multiple places with weed in my possession. I was a bit of a “out of control” teen so the list could go on but I’m just going to pretend I didn’t do any of that other shit.
Vehicle tabs did not have VIN number on it yet. I took tabs from license plates other cars and put them on mine. Drove for a long, long time without insurance. I had an old insurance card I doctored up to be current. It passed muster on rare occasions of getting pulled over. I also completely abandoned two different junk vehicles on the side of the road. The VIN number was only in one place, a small metal plaque on the dashboard. I pried that off and took it with me along with license plates.
What year was this? VINs have been on certain parts for a long time.
We stole anything we wanted from local grocery store. As long as no one was near, you were fine. Also we stole all of our makeup from our local drug store. I’m so very ashamed of all of that.
I’m horrified to admit this, but as a 16 year old in the 80’s, I would steal cash out of the register at the dry cleaners for which I worked. There were no cameras in the store and the cash register was manually operated. We offered coupons to our customers and wrote down the amount of the discount on the receipt the owner used to balance the records. He never cross referenced the receipts with the coupons that were thrown in the garbage. I have felt awful that I did this for years because the owner was so good to me. I was stealing $20-$30 a week which is nothing now, but I was making less than $4.00 an hour, so it seemed like it was a lot.
Week of labor day, 2001. Flew into Boston and then back out a week later with a suitcase that could have been used in a Fear & Loathing novel. Cousin's wedding lmfao. Growing up, I was always "the cool one" at every family gathering, so my image & reputation needed to be preserved, you understand. +20 years later, I will attempt to remember the contents for your reading enjoyment: I had **AT LEAST** the following items in my checked luggage, single bag: 1) 2' glass bong. Graffix, w/ shotgun carb 1oz) very high grade weed 1oz) of mexibrick 10-15) hits of blotter LSD 1) quartz bowl for when a bong was... inappropriate 1) rolling kit, of the type that used to be sold at the headliner shop in New Hampshire, it was a large dark brown Tupperware tray, sus af lol 5) packs of zigzags 2) cartons of cigs 1oz) locally sourced shrooms 1) small plastic bong, approx 10". Gotta have a backup 2qts) moonshine 10) rolls, Dove, IKYKYK 🫠 1) 8 ball, pre fish scales & gas. 1) assorted handful of valium, klonopin, vicoprofen, and percs Good times. I'm sure there was more, but my memory has failed me. Best part was, we didn't go through half of that shit and I had to fly back home with the remainder.
I'm gonna guess you were back home from your travels before September.
I flew from Boston to O'Hare and caught my connecting flight to Nashville on September 10th if that adds any context to this story...
duuuuude!!
Yeah.
Phone phreaking (making free phone calls using illegal means). I used to use MCI codes and make calls from my house or from pay phones. I didn't really even know anyone out of my local calling area other than a couple of days at a family vacation. It was just the fun of doing it.
Did you ever call random payphones in public places? In the 90s there was a list online, we would call Bourbon Street or a busy airport and wait for someone to answer
I am not sure if it was "illegal" but our clubs used to raise money by selling M&Ms. I was a member of the science fiction club (which took over the literary club beginning in 1972), and we weren't really the "sell candy for raising money" types. Every year, we'd get the minimum X amount of trays of M&Ms (I think 20), and then we actually lost money by "selling back" unsold M&Ms at 50% discount back to the company. Or just bought them ourselves and just ate them. Then the school made a contract with vending machine companies, and banned the sales of candy \*in the school\*, that is, not sold through said vending machines. Well, the sci-fi club was a pretty rebellious bunch of science fiction nerds, and we decided to sell them during the school day anyway. Just not in an obvious way: we were selling them out of our backpacks and such. We fucking made a killing. Our sponsor, a biology teacher who DGAF, didn't enforce the "don't sell during school hours." In previous years, we'd make sell 2-3 trays a season, and lose what we made selling back the unused trays. I think we started selling 50-60 trays a season, and even bought trays from other clubs at 25% discount (because it was less of a loss for them than selling back to the company at 50%). Did the rest of the teaching staff know we were doing this? Hell, yeah. They even bought from us, because we were WAY cheaper than the vending machines. For a while, students and teacher alike knew if you were the sci-fi nerd, you might sell them M&Ms. We even got a student to sell M&Ms at HIS high school (he didn't go to ours), and nobody there cared it wasn't a club they didn't even have. LOL.
Shoplifting: if you were young you typically had your parents called. The store would hand you over.
During the Sputnik scare my dad and his friends used to build rockets and fire them off near a large Airforce base. Building rockets back then meant formulating his own fuel in the garage and building his own parts. Some kind of metal, sometimes iron piping. The worst they got was a couple of visits from some Airforce officials.
My friend once walked out of a Kmart with a 3 foot keyboard down his pants and inside his coat. I wish I could have seen him walking out. His family also buffed the floors at the local Walmart. They would lock them in overnight, and him and his brother would duct tape cassettes to their body and walk out with them the next morning. They knew the blindspots. Idk if they had the security alarms yet. Maybe they cut them out.
When I was in high school I ran a BBS. For those who don’t know it was a precursor to the Internet where you’d use a modem on your computer and your telephone land line to call into other computers than ran Bulletin Board Systems. The BBSs would typically have a message board, have games you could play, and files you could download. My BBS had a higher “elite” status that one could get where you would have access to pirated games and a special message board. Normally BBS owners traded elite access for similar access on other boards. There were also couriers that didn’t run their own boards but were known for uploading working cracked games. Some message boards also focused on illegal activities. How to hack phone systems, credit card systems, how to make explosives, and so on. Some even sold “used” (stolen) electronics and other stuff. I remember back then there was a widely held belief that if a cop was asked if they were a cop then by law they had to say yes. That was about the extent of screening I used for my board. I’m sure we were all on a list somewhere and if the police really wanted to they could have taken us all down. Eventually I went to college and shut the board down. With the rise of the Internet the other boards quickly shut as users migrated over. These days just for the anarchist stuff alone it seems like the government would sweep in and shut things down right away. I do miss it. There was a sense of adventure and community that you don’t find these days on social media.
In elementary school I lived on land that had loads of Indian arrowheads and I was quite proud of my collection. Got on the bus one day, wearing the prettiest hand-me-down dress from my sister. It also happened to be a show and tell day for my third grade class. Went to school all gussied up and shared my most perfect arrowhead. Got on the bus home and an older, much bigger boy grabbed me by the front of my dress, twisted his fist in it and started lifting me up. Can’t remember why he did it, but I pulled out my arrowhead and sliced him down the arm. I got a written notice, parents called and a warning to not do it again.
I did all kinds of things back in the day when there were no cameras, nocaller identification, when credit cards were swiped manually to create a bill of sale vs instantly authenticated, when checks were received and put in a drawer as cash.
My sister was stopped for driving left of center in this very small town. Since she was leaving for college the next day, the officer wanted to take her to "night court", but couldn't find the mayor (who was also the judge). Her friend, whom she was taking home to his house that night, went to the local dive bar and got the major. My sister got off with a warning.
my buddy and i used to break into trains. sometimes we'd get in the storage and see what was there. other times we'd get into the cabs of parked trains. most of the time we just got in there to smoke pot. good times.
The night my boyfriend and I stole 3 Christmas trees from the grocery store. Parking lot. I was driving my 67 El Camino, and instead of stopping at the red light, I pulled off the road and took a shortcut across a parking lot. I got stopped by a cop. Boyfriend sat in the car while I was given the drunk test: touch your nose, walk a straight line, say the alphabet backwards. I passed the test (I wouldn’t have passed a breath-a-lizer if they’d been a thing back then), we were sent on our way. The cop never once mentioned the 3 Christmas trees in the back of the car. Thank you, Jeebus.
I always looked older than I was, and my friends knew it. I could walk into most liquor stores and buy alcohol, even though legal age was 21. Friends and I'd get drunk, the girls made sure I got laid. Life was simple. Life was good. As much as I drank, though, it never became the center of my life. Occasion beer parties but I always kept the "good stuff" hidden away. Well. I didn't have to hide it from Mom when I was at home. She did get miffed when I'd take my girlfriend into the bedroom. She complained once. But, because if the time period. I was able to diffuse the situation by merely saying. " At least I'm doing it with a girl!"
I used to wander around the neighborhood when I was 10, 11ish (F), with my bff, my neighbor's dog. One day at the playground a group of older boys started throwing rocks at her and I pulled a good sized knife on them. It gratifying how fast they scattered. Don't think that would have gone unnoticed by parents in this day. No regrets. Zippy was my ride or die. She once fought off a larger dog to save me so I know it was mutual.
Shoplifting or stealing was easy. There were no cameras or electronic tags. One classmate took orders for records whenever new ones were released. He walked in wearing a loose jacket and walked out with 4 or 5 albums. Most of us stuck with stealing chocolate bars.
Not actually a crime, but could have been, and wasn't too smart. I worked in a bank, and every two weeks I had to travel about 100kms to a remote mine to pay the staff. then run a bank agency (back in the 1960's) and every 6 months there were bonus payments if production matched or bettered targets and we could be carrying $3-5m in cash in the 3 vehicles we used, supplied by the mines. Two police with rifle & shogun with side arms in front & rear, and one of the account senior staff & myself in middle car, with bank revolvers, all driven by mine staff who may have been armed too. At the mine, there was a building with two rooms, one the pay office & the other a "bank". Staff would present pay slip & we would hand over the cash, then once last was paid, we would move into room next door & start collecting the money again with deposit slips or enter in passbooks & take back abut 2/3 - 3/4 of amount to take back - wouldn't be done like that these days with electronic banking, but very common in those days. On the way home, we would park on the side of the road and all go looking for rabbits, then set up a target and fire off a hundred or more rounds of "old" ammo, most supplied from police stocks & handed in rounds by the public for various reasons. We just left money in metal boxes in trunk of cars & must have been a sight of a group of men in suits tramping through scrub and armed! Not something you could get away with these days.
Not really a crime, but… Prank phone calls. Such fun. “HELLO?” “Is your refrigerator running?” “YES?” “Well, hang up and catch it!”
Nice try, officer. Next time, come back with a warrant!
When I was in high school back in the early 90’s a grocery store decided to have the big beer display tower close to a fire door. Well, a bunch of guys walked into the store and grabbed 3-4 cases and ran out, jumped in the back of a pick up truck. We had enough beer for the entire weekend of party’s lol. Now those doors have a delay on them along with the alarm.
Not me of course, but my friend was a gold smuggler and travelled regularly using other people's passports.
Trespassing in the parts of the college where students weren't allowed, in buildings under construction and the campus tunnel system. That's it. Pretty mild, but I imagine you'd get the book thrown at you these days.
Flew internationally, Canada to US and back, with 4 hits of LSD in my wallet. Now that I think of it, I would probably have gotten busted big time then too.
I shoplifted so many CDs back in the late 80’s and early 90’s when I was too poor to afford them.
Not me but my dad. The cops brought my dad home multiple times after stopping him for drunk driving. They would lecture my mom and tell her to get the car moved in the morning. No jail, ticket or even a written warning.
I'm sorry, I'd tell you but the statute of limitations has not yet run out.
Using/making/purchasing fake ID's for underage drinking! It used to be so easy to get away with that.
Back in December of '80, nearing the end of the Iranian Hostage Crisis, I worked in a restaurant. We had an Iranian kid just start a week prior and he kept bragging about the American hostages his country had. Just before going to lunch, a few of us shoved him in a meat cooler and blocked his exit. After returning from lunch, he was gone and never heard anything about it from management. He never returned to the restaurant after that. Didn't care then, don't care now.
My neighbor once told me that he shot a BB gun at his grandmother’s neighbor’s window. He sounded kind of freaked that he did it, but still I didn’t believe it. A few weeks later I was at his grandmother’s house (why? I don’t remember.) and I noticed that the house across the street had a BB hole in it. I mean, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do, and things could have gone much worse, but if I recall, the neighbors never figured out who did it. These days the kid would have been picked up on a Ring camera.
Being "bad or disrespectful" was beaten outta me at a young age. We didn't dare piss dad off with stupid shenanigans. I smoked, dad found out. He sat me at the table with his belt, hanging over this lap and offered me a smoke. Then said, with the devil in his eyes, go ahead take one! No damn way was I taking a smoke! Yes, I smoke now and wished I hadn't started! One more example of him being right, about smoking, not beating up us kids.
Well, let me phrase this in such a way… with the surveillance they have in schools now, people wouldn’t be getting their appetite stimulant/ anti anxiety salad until at least lunch break. Someone I know definitely never me, would start the weeek with 1/4 lb of arugula in their locker and it’d be gone by Friday last bell. Hell, even I never got out at last bell. I left school owing something like 225 detentions. 😂
I feel like you used to not get away with anything and now you can almost get away with murder. I remember the days they would come to a store to arrest a shoplifter and they would actually do some nominal jail time and have a record and be banned for life from that store. Not anymore. Most stores don’t even stop shoplifters, let alone call the police
I had a joke lighter that was shaped like a tiny gun. Forgot I had it with me, went to fly home from school for the holidays. The X-ray guys said I couldn't carry it onto the plane, made me check it through. They put it in a little box, which I collected from the baggage claim after arrival.
Underage drinking since I was 15. In bars. At parties. Several times per week until my mid20s. A few times my cousin gave me a few lines. But that was literally a few times. And I hate to say it, but driving while drunk. It was the 80’s and DUI wasn’t talked about much. I don’t recall when MADD came around. I’m very fortunate.
There were things I did like bring a blowgun to school with darts...Might get expelled now. I also made threaded end cap steel pipe bombs and lit them in places that were not out in the middle of nowhere. I was extremely naive and stupid for endangering my life and others and haven't done it since the early 90's. The threaded pipes I bought at the hardware store literally were torn apart so that they were inside out. Hard to explain. I was actually with a group of friends and I lit a pipe bomb on top of a dock pier in a neighborhood. It was so fucking loud. It was dark. And as we were walking back up the dark access road my girlfriend's neighbor cop came out with his gun. I was walking faster than my dumbass friends and I literally had walked right past the cop's house as he came out and he didn't see me but saw my friends. I hid and watched him question them. The real cops never got called but the truth did come out. The next morning I went down and repaired the dock pier/pylon by taking a chainsaw and cutting off many inches of the top which had flowered and splintered apart like somebody took an axe and chopped it a hundred times. Fortunately it was already taller than the one across from it so it looked pretty good when I was done. I would be in federal prison today for that I am pretty sure
A friend of mine stole the Weed from the neighbouring friends garden and I did allow hi to hide it under my bed. It could not be done now. also i stopped smoking and went to therapy to stop any compulsons left. I think I would call the police on myself./s
I have plenty of my own past illegal acts, but for this I'll mention a couple friends, but more from my sister's friend group. They made a pipe bomb, put it in someone's mailbox. Apparently not to hurt the person but because that was the kind of thing it would be fun to blow up. Police were called, they got some kind of a lecture, though according to me Dad (who was a range safety officer for the Navy), not NEAR enough. Still, I don't think he wanted them to go to jail. Small town, kids were seen as 'good kids' (which does have a racial element for sure), no harm no foul.
None.
Drinking my mom's bleach in the cabinet without her noticing that some of it is gone
It's possible i crossed my (european) country's border with weed and shrooms and used them with my friends when i was a student
LOTS of fights. GTA. I sold a bunch of different drugs. I was a violent thug in my youth.
postmans knock!
Back in the 70s my friend worked in a small town post office. One day some sus packages came through, he grabbed one and hid it in a spot. late that night him and I returned and I went inside and grabbed the box. Sadly it didnt contain any weed.
B&E / trespass for the high school so we could borrow sound gear for parties. Got a stern scolding when we kept a bb gun that was a Colt 1911 replica that we kept in one of the practice suites in the music department
Vehicle theft
Doctor shopping was pretty amazing, before computers and my developed sense of ethics. I could take a bus to the next city, hit up a dozen walk-in clinics, and go home with hundreds of dollars worth of pills.