Mine was our CRT TV. I would rapidly push the power button on and off because I thought the picture coming and going looked cool but eventually it fell inside of the TV. I think I later stuck a magnet on the TV.
Not looking for Reddit answers like “My parent’s marriage”
VHS player when I was a toddler. Was in the daycare and saw a cord, so naturally I pulled it. It was on top of the TV, which was bolted to the wall high up. Shattered on impact. Nearly fell on my head too.
I put a sandwich in the slot… Twice. I distinctly remember thinking how perfectly it fit. Didn’t bust, but wasn’t a good idea.
When I was a teenager my dad got a beautiful marble chess board. It was leaning on a wall, and when I picked it up it broke into two halves.
My dad was really sad and angry at me, that board meant quite a deal to him. He always thought I mishandled it, regardless how I said I was careful.
He died last November.
I got sent a few boxes with his belongings, and when I opened one of them I found that chessboard. It is glued with epoxy.
It sits in my apartment now, and I still don’t know if I want to keep it or get rid of it. One one hand it meant a lot to him, on the other hand it is one of the very rare things where I felt treated unfairly.
I’d say that you should keep it.
Except if you have anything of similar value already in posession in which case I can’t argue against or in favor.
Definitely keep it! This is the most wholesome thing I’ve read today :)
I broke a microwave when I was little because I didn’t know I had to remove my fork from my plate of broccoli, then proceeded to accidentally break the garbage disposal trying to dispose of the broccoli because I didn’t know broccoli couldn’t go down the disposal.
Wait, why can’t broccoli go down the disposal?
Certain materials found in foods, such as an overabundance of fiber, clog and damage the blades in the garbage disposal. Broccoli is at the top of this list.
I’ve never heard this before. If broccoli isn’t allowed I’m surprised anything is!
I set the majority of my mother’s finest dresses on fire. I was very young. We had a powercut one night so we were using candles. It came back soon after, but i was still a curious boy with a candle in my hand. I wanted to go somewhere dark again so i went inside my closet and closed the door. My mom ran out of space in her room for her dresses so she put them on my closet. Only the stuff she didn’t use often so it had the worst and the best. They were wrapped plastic and i was fascinated by how the plastic shrunk when the flame got close. But eventually I got too close and actually set it on fire. How did i react? Got out, shut the closet doors and went to watch tv. It’s a miracle i didn’t torch my whole house
How did i react? Got out, shut the closet doors and went to watch tv. It’s a miracle i didn’t torch my whole house
Lmao - reminds me of when I was in my early twenties and couldn’t handle my beer. We had a few people around, and the toilet was occupied, so I threw up in a bucket and hid it in a closet and went back to the party. Cue to next morning, “Lads… why is there a bucket of-”
Sigh…
When I was in the 3rd grade, our class had to do reports on countries around the world and we were all assigned a country. I got Egypt. Coincidentally, some friends of my parents had recently gotten back from a trip to Egypt. My parents asked their friends if there was anything I could bring in to use for my presentation. They let me borrow this little statue they got. It was an eagle with a hat, I think it was a depiction of Horus. It was carved out of some really nice white stone, maybe marble or something? I brought it into school, put it on my desk, and waited patiently to stand up and do my report. When I stood up, I bumped my desk, and the statue fell to the ground and broke in half.
Now monetarily this may not have been the most “expensive” thing, but it was the souvineer that this family brought back from Egypt that they had on their mantle to always remember the trip. It was priceless.
Why the fuck would you let a 7 year old bring your breakable souvineer to school for a class project?
Anyway, those people stopped being friends with my parents after that, so I have a feeling it was either expensive or meant a lot.
This hurts me to think about. Why did you have to ask this question?
:(
As a 10 year old I drove our car into a tree. It didn’t quite break though
My ex’s brother released the hand break when he was a kid left alone in the car for 5 minutes. Rolled into the wall of store his parents were buying groceries
I just turned on the car while it was in gear. No clutch or anything. It more or less jumped into the tree and died. I thought i had killed it!
I’m not sure about “expensive”, but it was priceless.
My mom had a really gorgeous piece of petrified wood about the size of a cup coaster and as a young kid I was obsessed with it. So one day I broke into her jewelry box where she kept it and stole it to bring to school for show and tell. Everything was fine until I was getting on the bus to go home and I tripped with it in my hand. It shattered like glass and so did my poor little heart.
I remember crying all the way home where I tearfully confessed to my thievery and apologized up and down to my mom. She honestly wasn’t very angry, and was a lot more understanding than I thought she might be. I don’t remember what happened to the wood afterwards but I don’t remember seeing it ever again so I wonder if she trashed it? It was so beautiful, so that would be a total shame.
What a sad story, and also sweet since your mom handled it so kindly!
I was probably 9 or 10 at the time, visiting at a (wealthy) friends house, and my friend was showing me a bunch of his dads cool stuff, among which was a legitimate whip, like straight up indiana jones style. Naturally, I had to try it out…indoors…underneath the crystal chandelier hanging in their entryway…I wasn’t allowed over anymore after that.
crystal chandelier… yikes, you did them a favour.
A brand new multi thousand dollar video camera that my pops had saved up for. I disassembled it entirely, just trying to figure out how it worked. He wasn’t even mad at me. I grew up and now can fix just about any electronic down to the component level. I like to think he saw the curiosity in me and was more proud than anything.
When I was around 14, my parents got my sister and I a 2nd hand Xbox (the OG big square Xbox), but we were too poor to buy any games for it. I used to rent the games from blockbuster for three days at a time.
I was fascinated with electronics, I’d build little radio kits and LED chasers, I was okay with a soldering iron. I was researching mod chips online, to play burned games. The guides on installation emphasised how small all the solder points are, and how fine the wires are, that it’s not a job for a beginner. But I thought it would be fine.
I tried to order a modchip online, but the site didn’t deliver to Australia. I remember seeing people advertising in the news paper classifieds section modchipping services, so they must be available somehow. I called one of the guys, but he said he only sold them as part of installation, couldn’t sell me just the modchip. I called a couple others, but none wanted to talk to a 14yo kid.
My parents caught wind of what I was trying to do, and they offered to pay to send it to the guy to get it done. So we just went with that. I was disappointed I didn’t get to do the installation myself.
The next week, we got our Xbox back, turned it on, and played a couple of burned games, it worked great. But I was curious. Did the guy do a good installation job? What gauge wires did he use? Which brand and model modchip did he use? I was full of questions. So while my parents were out I opened the Xbox up, disassembled it right down to the motherboard. I found the modchip, I was fascinated by how small it was, how fine the wires were, and how tiny the solder points were. It all looked so fragile. It looked like the guy had done a pretty good job.
I put the Xbox back together, went to play it, but it wouldn’t read any discs, not even genuine discs. Weird, did I forget to plug something back in on reassembly? I opened it up and found the disc drive cable was slightly unplugged. Plugged it in, reassembled, and tried it again. This time it read genuine discs, but it wouldn’t play any burned discs. I tried for a while, and it was like the modchip wasn’t working. That was when my parents got home. I was so angry and frustrated with myself, my mum asked what the matter was, and I started sobbing and crying furiously, I said “why can’t I leave things alone?” and “Why do I always have to take things apart?” and “Why didn’t I just enjoy the games?”.
A couple days later I had calmed down enough, I opened the Xbox up again, and had another look. I saw the problem immediately. One of the tiny hair-like wires on the modchip had popped off. Maybe because of my previous poking around in there, or maybe it just came off by itself, idk. Luckily it was on the modchip side, not on the motherboard side, so there was a relatively large pad to solder it back onto. Still smaller than anything I’d soldered before, but I gave it a go. It took about an hour, with my oversized non-temperature-controlled soldering iron, but I got it soldered back in place. While was there I resoldered a couple wires alongside it, so they were more secure too. I was shaking with anticipation when I put it all back together yet again, and fired it up. It worked! Played burned games again! I was so happy I was crying. The awful low from days before transformed into an amazing high of achievement, and gratification.
My parents told me the lesson was to never take things apart, leave well enough alone. But they were wrong.the lesson was far greater. It gave me the self confidence to know I can fix things. Yes I can and will break things, but I can fix them. I somehow absorbed that into my identity. From then on I was always trying to fix things. Phone line died, I repaired it. Computer got a virus, I formatted and reinstalled the OS. Lawn mower wouldn’t start, I cleaned and rebuilt the carburettor, didn’t know what I was doing, but I just did it, because I had the confidence. Then at age 24 I got a job as an electronics repair technician, so it worked out for me.
Was it long enough ago that he could simply take it back to the store and have them reassemble it for him? Or did he reassemble it himself? Or did you try to reassemble it? You’ve left me hanging on the edge of my seat!
It was done for, he got another one but it wasn’t nearly as expensive. It wouldn’t be for quite a few more years before I learned how to non-destructively disassemble things, and I didn’t have access to many tools. I can barely remember now but I’m pretty sure I used a butter knife to get out screws and pry stuff open. I just didn’t understand how a little box could record videos and I had to try to figure it out. I was probably 7 or 8, based on where I lived when it happened.
Huge respect for pops for not disassembling you.
For real. He could have very reasonably been very angry at me, and it might have defeated my curiosity before it really got a chance to get going, but by doing what he did, he associated it with good feelings that continued through until now.
or he’s doing the long con, and waiting till you buy something expensive so that he can disassemble it “out of curiosity” to test your reaction
I’m not sure how much my brother costs, but the three of us brothers were running across the top of monkey bars and jump kicking each other. I kicked my youngest brother off and he busted his head on the ground. It’s ~40 years later and he still has the scar on the back of his head.
I thought that was going to end with him dead
Yeah, it seemed really flip
Oh wow, yeah I see that now. Oops!
My grandparents had a lot of antiques, some probably which they inherited. My grandfather was particular proud of his clockwork wind-up clock (which was an antique even back then). I disassembled it to find out how it worked, but couldn’t figure out how to reassemble it (and my granddad couldn’t either).
He should have looked it up online
Our very expensive fridge. My dad beat the living shit out of me. I still remember the beating 35 years later.
How did you break a fridge?
Hell if I remember the details. That was like 35 years ago. I think I was pretending that I was fixing it? Lol
My sister and I figured out that we could draw. On the windshield of our neighbours car. Using stones.
…
I definitely have seen artistic careers with better beginnings.
Believe it or not, she’s now running a graphics design studio.
I believe you
I suspect i might be the winner here. My friend had an alley behind his house along with a nice strip of open land near a busy road. Eventually a strip mall was built and then another large commercial building started to go up. Being basically behind my friends house we walked over to this new building on weekend to check out the construction site.
The building was being built with cement block and had lots of scaffolding and yet-unused block scattered around. I found a pipe-bender - a very heavy tool made out of high quality steel - and found you could just tap on of these cement blocks and it would shatter to pieces. I was fascinated, as were my friends. I have no idea how many cement blocks we destroyed over the next couple of days, but it was a huge number. Then we decided to see if we could go through a wall with the pipe bender… we could indeed, making a hole in the side of the building we could walk through. Looking around we eventually realized what we’d done was awful… we had decimated this construction site. We finally slinked away and come Monday when the crew returned, police were called and neighbors interrogated but thankfully with privacy fences all around, none of the neighbors saw anything. 11 and 12 yr olds are stupid.
Kitchen window. About 2x3 metres if I remember right.
We had a trampoline in our backyard, outside the kitchen so mum could watch us while cooking or whatever. There was a huge hill (our house was in a bit of a mountainous area), and we decided to throw some rocks down the hill and bounce them off the trampoline… but we were uncoordinated 10 year olds so we missed every time. And it was just a bunch of little stones gathering in our backyard.
Then I found one rock. Pretty big, had to lift it with two hands and shot-put it down the hill. That was the one that we finally landed on the trampoline. And it bounced right through the kitchen window.
