When I was about 12, I had a friend who was a bad influence, lol. He would steal cigarettes and bottles of wine from our local grocery store, and share them with us, that’s the kind of bad influence I’m talking about.
Around July 4, we had bought some smoke bombs (the little cherry bomb kind) down at the fireworks stand, and being bored like 12 year olds get, dared each other to put them in interesting places. We put some in someone’s mail box, but that wasn’t really that big a deal. The real deal was walking into the apartment building that was a couple doors down from the house where I lived, and going into the laundry room. We threw smoke bombs into someone’s washing machine, while it was running, and quickly left the building. Me, I’m smart. He, well…was dumb. He HAD to go back to check the damage, and of course the lady who owned the clothes was there, pulling out her now BLUE clothes, that had burn holes in them.
We got dragged down to the local Fire Department where both the police and the Fire Chief lectured us about the incident. Then I spent the next 3 years paying my mom back for the clothes money that she paid the lady. Lesson learned. I was unsupervised as a kid, and my kids will never have that luxury.