There are two types of boys.. what type were you?

[Scott]

Always liked the plumes of dust from a good dirt clod.

I loved the smell of dirt clods in the morning. Smelled like..............victory.

[Allhallowsday]

I cannot count the number of times we hurt each other.  Another of our favorite activities was having dirt clod wars.  Once, we had a game that involved throwing old pieces of siding at each other.  They were a couple of feet long and flew like javelins.  I still have a small scar in my eyebrow from that.

We'll not even get into throwing walnuts at each other, with only garbage can lids as shields.

Dirt clods! Also,we would take green apples and sharpened sticks...and call them wicks. Put the small apple on the end of the stick...whooosh! Thos e suckers would fly...and hurt! Also have spear fights with the big reeds that grew near the swamp. The root ends were sharp and heavy with dirt...those hurt too.The migrant workers that lived up the road had a million kids...we used to have rock fights. REAL rock FIGHTS. This was serious sh!t to us little monsters!

More good stuff remembered, those crab apples, speared on the end of a green but crackin good whip were like flak and did hurt...the stone fights were savage with neighborhood kids, who got positively comic hurtling boulders that no one could not get out of the way of...I do remember little more than 40 years ago my sister and I trying to trick a younger neighbor into stepping in dog doo (he always went barefoot) poor little Brendan, it took a few tries of playing our wicked game, but he eventually got a good step o' barefoot n' d'bare doo.   He was a tough kid, and I still remember him pounding home all barefoot, crying, as if acid scarified...woohahahaha

[RCMerchant]

    Hallowsday-the giant rock trick....Hahahahah! Seems like some kid would always try that ...looked cool...not too effective. While the kid was trying to hurl the rock was a good time to aim and hurl a handful of machine gun fire...!

[Scott]

More good stuff remembered, those crab apples

Yea, we use to store crab apples in our fort for ammo. Those grotesque little apples did sting. We had a crab apple tree in our backyard.



We also use to store Hickory nuts and acorns for ammo and would hide them in a secret compartment in the floor which would get a lot of moisture and they would begin to sprout roots if you didn't use them up.

[the ghoul]

I was a car boy and still am.   Now I've got 2 life-size toys: a 65 Mustang and an 07 350Z, and I still play with those old Aurora cars with the snap together track!

[Raffine]

Probably the best and by far the most dangerous wars we ever had in my neighborhood were with those first generation "Clackers", which were two large glass balls held together with a piece of cotton string. The idea was to hold the string in the middle and make the balls 'clack' together, but they made for an impressive if potentially deadly bolas. Amazingly nobody ever got seriously injured in battle but my brother did stick a pair in our bedroom wall one night when I refused to "Shut up". 

Real Clackers bore absolutely no resemblence to the wimpy bits of plastic "Clackers" that were popular a few years ago.



Anybody remember "Wizzers"? They were brightly colored plastic gyro tops with plastic and metal tips. You'd rev 'em up and they'd spin seemingly forever. A bit boring (the 'Wizzer Tricks' packs helped some), but you could rev 'em up and stick 'em in someone's hair. They would instantly ride up the victim's hair and clamp onto their scalp! Tons of fun! http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/wiz.html



We once had a great idea for a bazooka war using bottle rockets and metal pipes, but someone narced to their mother before we even got started. 

[Andrew]

We once had a great idea for a bazooka war using bottle rockets and metal pipes, but someone narced to their mother before we even got started. 

Lucky boy, we actually went through with this.  We had PVC pipes with Plexiglas shields.  The smaller ones fired rockets that were a bit larger than bottle rockets.  I think they were called "Jupiters" and they detonated at the end of their flight.  The larger ones fired converted model rockets that had either firecrackers (like M80s or M100s) rigged to explode or had a mixture of black powder and flash powder set to detonate.

Being shot by a detonating rocket actually annoys a cow even more than a BB gun.

As I've often said:  I'm amazed that I survived childhood.

[DodgingGrunge]

Lucky boy, we actually went through with this.  We had PVC pipes with Plexiglas shields.  The smaller ones fired rockets that were a bit larger than bottle rockets.  I think they were called "Jupiters" and they detonated at the end of their flight.  The larger ones fired converted model rockets that had either firecrackers (like M80s or M100s) rigged to explode or had a mixture of black powder and flash powder set to detonate.

  Andrew, sounds like your childhood was inspiration for "Beat" Takeshi's yakuza games in Sonatine (1993).  I've always wanted to do that...

[raj]

Never played bottle rocket war until after college.
Did play blackwalnut battles, I got hit on the head one time so hard it started bleeding.

[indianasmith]

I remember stringing six bottle rockets together and launching a toad about 100 feet into the air . . . . but my GI Joe parachute saw him safely to the ground again!!!  I bet he told his little toady grandchildren about that!!!

[Raffine]

We had PVC pipes with Plexiglas shields.

Sweet.

I was also a "climber", a distinct subgroup of foolhardy boys. I would climb trees, trelises, iron latice work, utility poles, and just about anything where I could get a decent foothold. I only had two major accidents: one broken arm falling from the top of a pine tree (I blame a poorly placed rotten limb) and one broken collar bone jumping from my grandmother's roof into a minnow pond (we were playing TOWERING INFERNO or THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, I forgot which).

I'm still the one everyone sends up the ladder to paint roof peaks, change stairway lightbulbs, etc. Last year I sprained my back badly crawling out of a second story window to paint because I thought a ladder was "a waste of time". 

[BTM]

There was some doctor play to be sure, but it was all innocent curiosity.  Things haven't much changed.  All but one of my friends are female.  And believe it or not, all this feminine exposure has actually doomed my sex life.  I am forever fated to be the shoulder to cry on.  Damn my listening skills!    I feel like Orpheus sometimes.  (Because he visited Hades while he was alive, he could never properly die.)  Because I've been to "insider" hair/makeup/fondue parties, I can never be in a romantic relationship.  *sigh*  Haha.

Hmm.. you've let them desexualize you.. you're not a "friend" to them...  Wish I knew what to tell you about getting out of that.  Maybe the next time you're comforting a broken hearted female, you can slip a few hints like, "You need a man who'll appreciate you, and never treat you badly... I might think I know someone like that..." Then slip her some tongue!

Granted, I'm not expert on starting relationships, so I may not be the best source of advice...