When I was a child, I thought my parents were saints. The image faded as I learned of their stories. The stories were far more interesting than my preconceptions, but the best stories happened in their youth. The ballsy, immortal, insane belief system that most teenagers share make their stories wild, crazy, and often heroic. Do you have any stories like that?

I have many, but I'll start out with this one:

When I was roughly 16, I was all into programming. We had recently got a Windows 95 machine and everyone quickly dumped all knowledge of DOS. But I was always writing BASIC and BATCH programs.

Back in those days, the first thing your computer did after BIOS' POST was to check out your autoexec.bat file -- a simple BATCH program that told your computer what to do on start-up.

I wrote a custom autoexec.bat that was roughly 2000 lines of the pause statement. That would make the computer say "Press Any Key To Continue...." and then do it over and over again. It gave the illusion that it would last forever. Of course, you could always CTRL+C/V/B to break out of it (I can't remember which key anymore :D -- I think it's C).

Anyone, one day I got grounded for something I didn't think was fair. I was grounded from the computer for 1 month. The computer was huge for me. It was my artistic expression through programming and also my favorite thing to play games on (TIE Fighter!!!). So I threw a fit and told my parents "If I'm grounded, you're grounded!"

They had no idea what I meant. Late that night, I swapped my autoexec.bat for the real one and when they woke up in the morning to check their daily email, "Press Any Key To Continue..."

They asked me, "Did you do this?"

"Yes. You're grounded from the computer for a month." I smirked.

"How dare you do that to the computer! You're in soooo much trouble! You're grounded to your room! And get the computer working!"

"That's fine. I like my room. And no. You're grounded from the computer for a month."

"No TV!"

"You're grounded from the computer for a month AND I don't care about TV. I'll read or nap. I'm good."

They wen through a list of no outdoors (bluffing), no dinner (bluffing), no TV, no extracurricular, no etc. But they just didn't have any leverage on me. I was happy with books, naps, homework, school, and computer. I like running outside, I liked watching TV, but I just didn't have a passion for those things. :)

I was almost physically beaten, I think. You could see it in their eyes. I had pushed them to the edge. But in the end:

"Can you fix the computer?"

"Yes. It will take roughly 15 seconds."

"Then do it."

"If I'm un-grounded from the computer."

Pause. Think. Wait. Deliberate.

"Fine. Fix the computer and you can use it again."

That was the one time I ever got out of a punishment by punishing back. Really, they should have beat me or erased save game files or something. :) But in then end, I prevailed!

P.S. Share some of your stories of insolence, mayhem, immortality, zaniness, or otherwise interesting!

I like this thread and I like your story! Ah yes, the autoexec.bat (and config.sys) our old friends ;) In the vein of your story I have a pretty good one too (rather than the late teen years / early college days ;) ).

My parents had a boat when I was young. Nothing fancy, but a good solid full keeled 20 foot sailboat. I don't know if it was because my mom was a worry wort or my dad was a bit timid but as kids we'd just putter around in the pond with this thing, very rarely even using the sails LOL.

So I must have been under 18 (but certainly 16 because I drove) when I decide I'm going to take the car, take the boat and go tooling around with this thing with one of my more adventurous buddies. I pick him up, we go to the docks and we take off. I had friends with parents that had been letting them rip around on Lasers and Sunfish since they were 12 and I had never once taken this thing out on my own.

We stop for take out lunch / brunch at this place on the water. Typing now, it occurs to me that this was probably the stupidest thing I did this trip. I actually remember just pulling up to a short fishing pier, tossing out the bumpers and tying her up LOL. Between damage to the boat and harbor police seeing a 20 foot sailboat just... "there" I'm surprised nothing bad happened. Anyway, I use the payphone and call my parents to tell them what I did. There's not much they can do about it now anyway so might as well let them know ;)

Next stop, we take the boat out beyond the breakwall (something I don't ever remember doing with my parents) and fly around under full sail on open ocean. It's fantastic. By the time we start heading back it's already dusk. Of course this boat has no lights or reflectors or anything so we're just gliding through the pond in twilight. It's pretty dark by the time we get back to the docks and of course my parents are there. They... weren't nearly as mad as I thought they'd be and while my mom was worried she wasn't a total mess. They basically told me don't ever do that again without telling them and don't ever come back so late. Secretly, I had the impression my dad was happy I finally got to really "use the boat" - probably deep down my mom too.

They sold the boat not long after (totally unrelated to my little adventure - slip space was starting to cost far too much and we just didn't use it that often) but I'm still glad I went on that excursion. I'm sure the story would have been much more interesting if it involved a case of cheap beer and that hot Senior everyone in school wanted but I wasn't that wild a youth. In a few years maybe but for now this was more than enough ;)

I'm actually in my youth, but...I have no such crazy stories. I'm a notoriously calm person, it's just everybody AROUND me who's crazy.
Now, if you wanted a story about my family, I could talk on HOURS about those. We've got everything from elder fraud to manipulative puppetry to feuds spanning decades.

A loop would've been better in the batch file, like with a 'net send' (I think that was it at least) command.
More nerdy than ballsy though.

Well one of them fancy iterative loops than.
Back in the day a friend of mine put the intro.wav of Outpost as the startup sound for his dads Windows account.
Again, not very ballsy.. but funny.

"Any mistake at this point can doom you and your colonists to certain death. Have a nice day!" That one?

Could be, it's been like fifty years or so.
I just remember it going on for like five minutes.

How fun! I've never been out on the open ocean alone, let alone as a kid. I bet that was super-fun.

Your fun was my kind of fun, too. It's better without drugs, alcohol and women. :)

When I was 16 I left school and home and moved to another country to live with a woman I met online... does that count?

(still happily together 10 years later, in case you're wondering)

That counts! But you'll have to tell us more!

There's not all that much more to tell.. we met online, went to a real life meet up of the place we hung out with online and became good friends, talked a lot more online and fell in love.
After that I didn't think I could wait to finish school and all the rest to be able to be with her, so I packed it all in and just moved in with her.
Best thing I ever did :)

When I was 10, I set a dog on fire.

I thought you did that at least once a week.

Great story. :)

I have no tales of rebellion. My friend had enough for both of us. One time he randomly kicked in a fence before I could stop him and we had to hide in a cornfield from the enraged owner. One time he picked a bird’s nest out of a tree which caused an emergency assembly in school. One time we were playing Laser Tag and he performed the most unnecessary and amazing diving roll I’d ever seen, while wearing a laser pack that weighed 30-40lbs.