What weird/messed-up, illegal, odd, strange, rebellious things did you do as a teen?

I don't know why but the past couple of days I've been reminiscing about my teenage years.

I was a quiet kid. Got decent grades. Not very sociable. Had a few friends but we were all kind of geeks loserish.

I was never rebellious in the traditional sense (drinking in fields or getting into trouble in school). The **** I did was often so weird I laugh about it now.

When I was 15 I went through a phase of rambling around an old semi-abandoned industrial estate. I loved being alone in there. Anyways - I started to hang out with hobos. We had a little core group going and they'd all relax under a kind of shed thing with a few cans. I just hung out with them after school a few times a week. It never dawned on me that I was hanging around with dangerous criminals and junkies. They'd often offer me a can which I always refused. I could have been feckin raped for all I know. But they never actually tried anything and we all got along. A few years later I heard locally that one of them died and I got a pang of sadness wash over me.

I was also a fire bug and was obsessed with burning things. I'd never damage anything or hurt anyone. But I loved setting little fires in fields. To this day I can get a solid camp fire going in wet conditions with one match.

Fell in love with a girl when I was 16. So I used to text her loads. Non stop sappy love bird texts on my clunky Nokia. But when I seen her around the area I'd just fly by on my bike and act like she didn't exist. The truth is that I was socially awkward and would panic and just GTFO of there when I seen her. Or if we did all hang out in a big group I'd talk to everyone but her. She'd often send me a text while we were together in a big group like "R u ignoring me?" - I'd panic and go home. Then we'd play chess on MSN messenger like nothing happened.

Anyways, I guess she thought I was playing her hot/cold or was super cool on my bike or something. Wound up being together for four years. Great girl. Wish that strategy would work these days! :P

Used to go on massive walks. Like 6 hour walks by myself. I'd have blisters on my feet when I got home. Loved em and I still do.

I used to intentionally make gardaí stop and question/search me and my friends. I wanted to be a garda so much and loved chatting with them. But the only way I could take to them was if they taught I was up to no good. If a van drove past I'd just fcuking stand there like the big geeky dope that I was, stare the ever living fcuk out of them and they'd whip around and talk to us. Maybe search us. I "had my name taken" like a million times. Never caught us doing anything bad or illegal. I just liked talking to guards for some reason. I got a thrill out of it.

My dad would routinely ban us from using the phone line for dial up internet if he thought I was using it too much or if we got a big bill. I saved an "offline" version Yahoo.ie in Internet Explorer . I used to edit the source code in Notepad and then load up my own version with my own news headlines and that days date up the top. I had my father believing that I was using the phone line and he'd flip ****, check the back of the computer for the phone line and then back away confused and angry. So I unintentionally taught myself the basics of HTML coding at age 14 purely to piss off my dad.


I was a weird teenager. :pac:






- fukuyama