I have a few. My family is wonderful for telling and retelling family stories.
When my maternal grandfather was 12 the school he and his brother attended ran IQ tests on them and they both topped out list for the province at that time. The school also found out that my grandfather and my uncle weren’t twins (they had been placed in school at the same time) so they bumped my uncle to a higher grade. My grandfather got so angry that his brother had been moved he opted to leave school. At the time they were living with their maternal grandmother as their father was working the rails. After several attempts to get my grandfather back in school failed his father was called back home. He came home angry, grabbed his son and took him to a cabin in the woods to “teach him a lesson”. One night they got into it and my grandfather punched out his father and took off.
My grandfather got a job with B.C. Forestry services at 13 (he looked to be 16 or so because he could grow a decent moustache). WWII broke out and he applied to the Irish Fusiliers. He was accepted…for a while until they found out he was 13 and he was kicked out. Then he met my grandmother, who was 7 years older than him, and fell in love. He didn’t tell her how old he was. He joined the army and was, again, kicked out once they discovered his true age. He finally clued in, sat down at his grandmother’s kitchen table and changed the year of his birth. He applied, and was accepted, to the RCAF. He married my grandmother and they became pregnant. He went off to Alberta to train and came home for 1 week after my mother was born to meet her and spend some time with her. He shipped out to England.
Eight months later he was flying a secret mission over Belgium when his plane was shot down. He was KIA.
We have no idea when my grandmother found out just how young he was. He died at 18.