I was smarter than my mom by age 8

or 

This is why you should never leave adults unsupervised.

 

My childhood was pretty cool and really messed up at times.  During the cool times, I was basically a normal kid playing with my friends and getting into trouble as young boys will do.  The messed up times were always related to some adult in my life making a really bad choice.  Sometimes the 2 would run together.  See the example below.

(This is almost exactly like the go kart I had as a kid.)

So my brother and I had an awesome aunt and uncle who bought us all sorts of cool toys.  One of which was a go kart.  The go kart had a top speed of 35 MPH.  (look at that picture again and imagine that going 35 MPH with no helmet or seat belt or anything.  Yes, it was fucking amazing.)  We kept it locked up and my aunt and uncle's house for the longest time.  During the summer when they were watching my brother and I while my mom was at work, they would let us take the go kart and drive it around their neighborhood.  It was awesome because there was no traffic in their neighborhood and there were lots of big hills and curvy roads.

Keep in mind we had the go kart from the time I was about 6 or 7 until I was about 9 or 10.  I can't remember exactly how old I was, but never the less, my 70 something year old aunt and uncle would let my brother and I drive a go kart down public streets when we were both still less than 10 years old and they thought this was perfectly fine and possibly a good idea.  (adults can be really stupid huh?)

So anyway, after about a year, my aunt and uncle started to restrict when we could use the go kart mainly because they got tired of having to go buy gas for the damn thing.  So of course we would sneak off with the key and take it out when ever we thought we could get away with it.  We always got in trouble afterwards, but for some reason they kept putting the key for the go kart and the pad lock it was chained up with in the exact same place.  Sometimes we would have to plot to get the keys.  Like one of us would go to the store with my aunt while the other one of us would stay at the house with my uncle and sneak off to steal the keys.

One day while I was staying at my mom's house and my brother was staying at my aunt and uncle's house, my brother stole the keys again because he was bored.  I don't know all the details as to what happened next, but the basic story is my brother went out riding around the neighborhood for a while and decided to go to his friend's house about 4 miles away.  On the way there, he got pulled over by the cops.  (yes, my 9 year old brother got pulled over by the cops.  At least I am pretty sure he was 9 because what happened concerning me happened while I was only 8.)

As a result of this, my mom and my aunt and uncle decided the go kart was no longer safe in their garage because my brother would just steal the keys again.  They decided to take the go kart to my mom's house instead.  (Keep in mind, I lived with my mom and my brother lived at my aunt and uncle's house.  Its a long story that's boring and sad at the same time.)

So the next weekend, my mom got a friend with a truck and they went and brought the go kart to my mom's house.  My mom decided that because the garage at her house was really easy to break into that she would just put the go kart in the living room until she could decide what to do with it.  I watched my mom and her friend spend the next 20-30 minutes struggling to get the go kart through the front door.  Once they were done, my mom rode with her friend back to his house which was about 25 minutes away.  Basically she would be gone for an hour.  I asked if I could get the go kart out if I could play with it and my mom said "Go for it." because she assumed there was no way I could get the thing out on my own considering the trouble they had getting it in.  She specifically told me I was not allowed to get any help.  (Great parenting there mom.)

After she had left, I went and turned the go kart around and walked it out the door with no problems because I watched and learned from the mistakes my mom had made.  (you remember those toys that people give babies with a star and a square that kids put inside of a ball?  matching shapes and stuff?  It seems my mom never played with one as a kid.)  I believe it took me all of 5 minutes to get the go kart outside and lock the front door to the house.

So I spent about the next 45 minutes driving all around my mom's neighborhood terrorizing all the loose dogs and making the other kids jealous because I had a go kart.  After a while I came around the corner of one block and saw my mom's car heading towards the house.  I took off like a bat out of hell to catch up and came to a screeching stop by whipping into a fish tail just as my mom parked her car.

Needless to say, she was PISSED and demanded to know who helped me get the go kart out of the house.  I told her no one had helped and she said she wanted to watch me put the go kart up all by myself.  This process took all of about 5 minutes because I kept bumping the hot engine with my arm.  When my mom watched me get the thing in the house, all she could say was "Mother fucker.  You have got to be kidding me."  She then took the key and hid it where I couldn't find it.

She would let me play with it every once in a while, but that ended quickly when I let my best friend drive it and like an idiot it crashed it into a fence post and bent the front end up to where you couldn't steer it very easily and the brake pedal wouldn't stay in place so you couldn't stop.

After that, it got locked up in the garage and eventually my mom sold it.  That was a sad day for me.