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”
An antique crystal vase.
I was maybe in my tweens and bought flowers for some occasion (a birthday or anniversary maybe) and the florist said I should use boiling water to keep them fresh (yes, it is a thing), but obviously I misunderstood, and not knowing any better I added the boiling water directly in to the vase (which I chose because it was my favourite) and of course it exploded in my hand. Lucky I wasn’t hurt, and I did manage to glue some of it back together, but I was not getting away with it. My mother was furious.Reminds me of a story of my parents. They were in Venice for their anniversary and had rented a room above a glass maker. One morning he wanted to show them how beautiful the morning light looked as it falls through this huge glass pyramid he had made. An enormous thing. One of his master pieces. Super expensive and also super heavy. He dropped it and it shattered into a million pieces.
I still have the crystal they got me as a souvenir. It makes nice rainbow colours when the sunlight falls through.
At least it wasn’t you who did it, and you got a cool gift out of it lol
I’m not even a tween and I still don’t understand what they meant for you to do. Are the flowers supposed to be in soil, and you’re supposed to just water the soil with a bit of boiling water?
I mean, as an adult, I’d probably check if the material could hold boiling water…but even that’s not 100% if it seemed ceramic or something, haha
Maybe boiled water, like water that has been boiled and is now cooled off again
Ahh… to disinfect it or something in a place where the water might not be fully clean?
Yup, that’s what google told me. It removes some of the bad stuff that might be in the water
You say you’d check, but couldn’t look up “boiling water flowers” before replying here? At least when this happened I had the excuse of not having the internet yet (and being a literal child, following the obviously unclear instructions of a professional, to the best of my understanding)…
https://www.sarahraven.com/articles/the-basics-of-arranging-cut-flowers
Yes, I’d check about putting boiling water somewhere, but not googling before writing that comment. The comment allowed me to express solidarity with you that it was an easy mistake to make.
My teen brother parked his motorcycle on the driveway. I don’t even remember how I managed to tip it over; I must have tried to climb on the seat or something and pushed at just the right angle to make the kickstand give way. Then in a tears and adrenaline fueled panic, I pressed it up… and tipped it over on its other side. I left it as it was dinged up on both sides. I tearfully confessed to my brother what I had done and he didn’t really care; ends up it was a total junker but in my little kid eyes it was the coolest thing ever.
I worked briefly at dominoes. One day I parked my bike a little too close to the others and didn’t put the kickstand properly. It tipped over and dominoed five other bikes.
Jesus maybe? At church during the Christmas service. Accidentally dropped it. No clue how much it was worth, but I don’t remember breaking particularly expensive things.
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?
:(
My phone in school. It was a smartphone, back before smartphones were quite the norm, so it was a big deal, and I was in another state as a minor, so I did need a phone. There was some two for one deal, so my parent got theirs and mine, so it wasn’t quite so bad, but it was technically a pricy bit of tech.
Campus was on a hill, so I stumbled and dropped it while walking down the stairs.
I think it would translate to, like, five stories of stairs if it was in a building and not on a hill?
It never went into the grass, just kept bouncing down stairs. 🤦
This made me laugh. I’m sorry for your loss.
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.
I love this lil’ story, thanks for sharing
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
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 jobs as an electronics repair technician, so it worked out for me.
That’s a great story! An Xbox mod chip was my first soldering job! It was a Team Xecutor chip, and I too used an old, terrible iron. I’m honestly not even sure how I did it, when I got more into soldering later, and looked up that chips installation process, I was amazed I was able to do it. My dad got me the mod chip even though he hated gaming because he thought correctly that it would be a great learning opportunity for me. He always supported my curiosities and hobbies. I’ve got to go thank him now. Thanks for sharing the story with 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.
I set the mayority of my mothers 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-”
That’s such a great reaction to starting a fire in a closet full of priceless and flammable stuff! “Oops! I think I’ll just close the door on that problem and hope no one notices.”
I’m tempted to call it such a child’s reaction to a problem they don’t know how to solve. But I know I’m guilty of doing the same thing as an adult, just not with a potentially fatal raging closet fire fueled by a plastic coated wedding dress.
The more I think about it, the more in awe of what you managed to achieve.
Lol yeah as an adult I feel like I’ve done similar things. Not with a house fire or immediately life threatening scenario. But definitely like “well I don’t really want to deal with that problem…I’m just going to walk away and hope it goes away” lol!!
They used to make these things called “Shrinky-Dinks”, which were sheets of thick plastic that you would color with pencils, then cut them out and stick them in the oven and they would shrink down to a smaller size.
Well one day when I was 3, I decided I could do this by myself, except that I put them in the toaster oven on the grate on like 400 degrees. Of course that shit melted through the grate and onto the heating element inside the toaster oven. Thankfully my parents noticed the smell before a fire started. Not sure how much a toaster oven cost in the '80s, but they had to get a new one one.
An arcade center VR headset.
This was in the 90s or early 2000 when VR was non existent to consumers. During holidays visiting the US we ended up in this arcade center, probably in LA, where they had circled booths with an old FPS VR game that you play standing up. The headset looked like a helmet and was plugged from the top.
During my game, I turned on myself (360 no scope style) so much and always in the same direction that the cables got tangled and finally broke, probably with a little spark and some electrical sound. Game over.
As a French preteen, my English was bad and all I remember is the “shiiiiiiit” the worker said when he looked at the headset and cables.
Sorry buddy 🤷🏻♂️
Was it this thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)
I paid $5 USD as a kid to play this thing at the mall, which was a fortune to me, but I loved stuff like this so much I thought it was worth it. The game was so shitty I couldn’t even tell wtf was going on or what I was supposed to do. Just randomly floating through a sea of polygons until the guy said time was up.
Yeah it looked a lot like the first picture in the Wikipedia article.
I don’t remember the game but I couldn’t understand shit as well nor the graphic style.
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 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.
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!
My dad’s truck, I thought it would be a great Idea to clean his motor. Got into the electrical system. He never told me how much it was, but, as an adult I could only imagine.
Nothing big tbh.
A car window, or a record player would be it, I’m just not sure which cost more.
They were both accidents, though the car window was ab accident due to stupidity rather than a completely innocent act that went wrong.
The record player, I was just trying to play one of my 45s, and the arm snapped off. I don’t really remember applying much pressure, and I was about 5 or 6, so it wasn’t like I was a powerhouse. My dad didn’t get it repaired, so no clue what monetary cost would have applied. He ended up buying a better one second hand from my uncle, which was about 150 back in the eighties, so not cheap but not crazy either.
The car window was my dumb kid ass chucking rocks with my sister. Now, the dumb part was throwing them in the direction of the cars at all, but me and my sister were both pretty damn young, and I had no idea I could throw a small rock that far. Maybe the size of a dime. Wouldn’t have thrown that direction if I had thought I could hit anything.
Again, not sure what the actual cost was because my dad never said. But it was enough that he couldn’t make a trip to go to a wedding up north, so there’s that as a rough idea.
Other than that, I was not a destructive kid, nor a reckless one. Anything else I ever broke was genuinely something where it would have broken for anyone, or was just a result of a kid not having perfect balance and control. You drop shit when you’re a kid, but it was always minor stuff.
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
