What did you get away with? I won't tell. Honest. I was kinda an ornery kid too!

Ok. This is top secret. Shhh....

I remember my two sisters and myself, along with the 3 boys from next door, going underneath a house on the block. This was in New Mexico - they didn't have basements - the ground was too hard. So it was quite easy to slither underneath the house.

Well, one day, one of the boys brought a book of matches that they had pilfered from their dad....and began lighting the matches, trying to light some twigs on fire.

Let's just say that when the twigs caught fire, my sisters and I scurried out of there as the smoke was quite visible.  We barely escaped punishment. The boys were spanked and sent to bed as soon as they were caught - I believe that it was summer and about 5 in the afternoon. They had a long night ahead of them.

putting marijuana joints in the goody two shoes lockers when they brought the drug dog to school. Burning up the snitches lockers with their books and stuff in it.lololol yes i was a problem child but no one suspected me

Who ? Me ? I was always the Teachers pet and a perfect boy. Never burped or farted at school or at the dinner table, never put tacks on people's chairs, never had a couple of whoopee cushions, never got into any fights and always did my chores like I was told. Never put cherry bombs in the school toilets and flushed them either.

Not me, but one of my kids who still takes delight in remembering it all these years later.

His high school teacher asked the class to write an essay about "stress in the home" and then made the mistake of saying, "it doesn't have to be totally accurate."

That was a licence to tell lies and he wrote that "Dad is an alcoholic who hardly ever comes home and when he does he's always drunk. Mum is a hypochondriac and spend all day in bed. She expects me to do the cooking and cleaning, and to look after the other kids."

When the teacher had time to read the assignments she called him aside and offered any assistance she could. She even offered to have the child welfare people look in on us to see if they could help

We didn't learn any of this till years later when he told us what he'd written. I'm sure that, at that school, we had the reputation of being deadbeats

I didn't get away with squat.