I used to try to see if a dry leaf burns when holding a magnifying glass over it and the suns rays go through it.

I was the scheduler for an outpatient child psych clinic that was contracted to screen all the child fire starters in my city-if the police or fire department got involved the kids had to come into the clinic. Personally, I only remember doing this as a teen out of boredom and it was pretty small scale stuff. My ex spouse set a field on fire as a kid.

Yes, my best friend and I used to love making our own fires in the woods and also playing with lit candles for fun! I’m a woman btw and now have a PhD (psychologist), am married, have 2 kids, etc. I find it strange that it is somehow considered deviant behaviors.

In the '60s my two brothers and I (all about ages 8-11) set fire to the tall grassy field behind our aunt's garage. We couldn't put it out and had to run in and get our mom who freaked out and managed to put it out with the hose before the whole field burned and then the trees behind the field. We were just playing with matches.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I assume its inversely proportional bc straight A students generally tend to be highly risk averse. I guess I'm trying to convey his personality - risk averse, highly buttoned up type of guy. I still can't believe it!

+100

My du and his brothers were hellions, although they have all grown up to be stable and respectable adults. But in 1983, there seemed to be a much higher percentage of "bad" teens than what there are now.

Can we blame lead paint and lead in the gas for it?

I'm not actually sure that kids shouldn't be able to get away with making some really awful mistakes. I don't want anyone to get hurt, but I don't want to see kids permanently wrecked because they were dumb and tried to sell some weed at school, either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids were always setting fires for fun in my neighborhood. There was a long stretch where we’d meet after school every day with a collection of items to burn: newspapers, stuffed animals, hairspray, anything we could find. It eventually came to an end when someone called the cops about one particularly large fire in the woods. We were pretty lucky no one got hurt.

One kid I know made a flamethrower out of an Entertech squirt gun. Hooked a candle to the muzzle with a wire hanger, then filled the gun with gasoline from the lawnmower. Great idea, but the design flaw was that the candle was too close to the muzzle and the stream caught fire and the fire traveled back into the gun and blew up. He didn't lose any digits but his hand was pretty badly burned.

We were idiots...but I still get excited thinking about the anticipation waiting for him to light that thing.

......aaaannd this was when future helicopter parents were created. I hate that label, but, after the sh!t my friends and I did/experienced, you're damn right I'm keeping an eye on my kids.

+100. Poster with the husband who burned his father’s car again. Both DH and I were rather rebellious when we were younger and it will be over my dead body that my kids will do the sh** we did. 70’s/80’s teens generally have very good reasons for becoming helicopter/tiger parents!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH and his friends who were all super good kids at the time apparently used to douse tennis balls in lighter fluid and set them on fire on a concrete driveway. In high school!!!

Literally blew my mind. My DH was and still is a straight A kid who literally never got in trouble.

Why do you assume that the relationship between good grades/good behavior and making tennis ball bombs is inversely proportional?

Guy I knew in college, eagle scout and all that, had tales about pranks at his school (I think private)--they painted some kind of chemical on the blackboard so when the teacher wrote on the board it made sparks and flames, and once removed all the wheels from the dean's car. Another guy I knew, vegetarian environmentalist, turned out (his brother told us) to have pulled the legs off of bugs when he was a kid.

But around the small town where I lived, which had actual wilderness around it, it was a fairly common occurrence for the fire dept to have to put out a grass fire somewhere, where kids had been fooling around.

Maybe cooking fires were really invented by a prehistoric teenager whose parents kept telling him to stay away from the lightning-caused fires.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mind is blown by this thread.

Same. This was never a thing with me or my friends, and we were always out in the woods unsupervised and stuff. I can’t think of one instance where any of the 10+ kids in my neighborhood did something like this.

How old are you?

39

90’s teens tended to not be as reckless and wild (probably due to greater supervision) than 70s/80’s teens.

Anonymous wrote:Making miniblowtorches with a lighter and hairspray? Yes. Lighting matches just to watch them burn? Yes. Play with lenses and focusing sunlight? Yes. Fireworks? Yes.

My brothers used to do the hairspray thing. We didn't have lighters back then (before the disposable lighters were everywhere) and I was afraid of matches.

Anonymous wrote:I assume its inversely proportional bc straight A students generally tend to be highly risk averse. I guess I'm trying to convey his personality - risk averse, highly buttoned up type of guy. I still can't believe it!

+100

My du and his brothers were hellions, although they have all grown up to be stable and respectable adults. But in 1983, there seemed to be a much higher percentage of "bad" teens than what there are now.

Anonymous wrote:Beach town living year round. Teens are starting their ritual bon fires now. No adult supervision since they're all trained how to safely do it, extinguish, wait for embers to cool and dispose of all debris and any kid made trash. Every kid has a job and item to bring. Parents pick up and if the job isn't done properly, no more bon fires.

I don't think having bonfites is the kind of "setting fires"that OP was referring to. I am the pp whose husband burned down his father's car. He and his friends frequently had bonfires as well, but I would never think to include that as an example of setting fires for fun.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My mind is blown by this thread.

Mine too. Not sure how my parents educated us on fire, but the effect was that I never had any inclination to play with fire. Ever. I liked looking at campfires, but that was it.

Are you a male or female? And how old are you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids were always setting fires for fun in my neighborhood. There was a long stretch where we’d meet after school every day with a collection of items to burn: newspapers, stuffed animals, hairspray, anything we could find. It eventually came to an end when someone called the cops about one particularly large fire in the woods. We were pretty lucky no one got hurt.

One kid I know made a flamethrower out of an Entertech squirt gun. Hooked a candle to the muzzle with a wire hanger, then filled the gun with gasoline from the lawnmower. Great idea, but the design flaw was that the candle was too close to the muzzle and the stream caught fire and the fire traveled back into the gun and blew up. He didn't lose any digits but his hand was pretty badly burned.

We were idiots...but I still get excited thinking about the anticipation waiting for him to light that thing.

......aaaannd this was when future helicopter parents were created. I hate that label, but, after the sh!t my friends and I did/experienced, you're damn right I'm keeping an eye on my kids.

Anonymous wrote:Kids were always setting fires for fun in my neighborhood. There was a long stretch where we’d meet after school every day with a collection of items to burn: newspapers, stuffed animals, hairspray, anything we could find. It eventually came to an end when someone called the cops about one particularly large fire in the woods. We were pretty lucky no one got hurt.

One kid I know made a flamethrower out of an Entertech squirt gun. Hooked a candle to the muzzle with a wire hanger, then filled the gun with gasoline from the lawnmower. Great idea, but the design flaw was that the candle was too close to the muzzle and the stream caught fire and the fire traveled back into the gun and blew up. He didn't lose any digits but his hand was pretty badly burned.

We were idiots...but I still get excited thinking about the anticipation waiting for him to light that thing.

My brother loved playing with matches and candles as a kid. He almost set the kitchen on fire once while my parents were out. Luckily a neighbor heard him screaming and managed to put out the flames. No more matches and candles after that.