What Bad Thing Did You Do As A Kid?

One day, when I was in fourth or fifth grade, I was waiting for the school bus. Few activities suck more than waiting for a bus in the middle of winter in Minnesota, especially when that bus is just going to take you to dumb school, so I was, obviously, in a foul mood. Eventually a school bus rounded the corner—but it was a bus from some other school, and not the one that would take me to my school, which, while not exactly my favorite place, still beat standing on the corner when it’s like 10 degrees out.

So, because I was, like most kids, a little shit, I picked up a large ice chunk (I remember it being oblong and roughly 12-inch sub-sized) and hurled it, full force, at the offending bus as it drove past me. This was a proper, solid chunk of ice, not a mere snowball.

It hit side of the bus dead on. The bus stopped. I’m not sure if I expected that to happen or not. The driver of the car behind the bus didn’t seem to expect that to happen, nor did that driver expect the bus to then back up, which it did, I guess so that the bus driver would not block the intersection when he left the bus to confront me.

Instead, the bus backed into—and then over, as in on top of the hood of—the car behind it, making a loud sort of crunch and then a grinding sound as the back of the bus dragged itself over the hood of this trapped car. The bus driver stopped when he realized what was happening, but at this point car and bus were clearly inextricable, and car very badly damaged.

Then my bus came and I got on it and went to school before anything bad happened to me and I suffered no negative consequences.

What bad thing did you do as a kid?