Most of my troublemaking involved the oldest technology: Fire. Matches and flammable liquids were frequently my preferred tools, although as I got older I learned to steal my mom's Bic lighters.
Remember steel soda cans? Those could be stacked to make tennis ball cannons, fueled by lighter fluid. You could also soak the tennis balls in lighter fluid, ignite them, and play fireball hockey.
Firecrackers, Roman Candles and Bottle Rockets used to be legal when I was a kid. In the summers, our dads would buy cartons of the stuff, far too many to light off on one early July evening.
So we'd have wars.
A dozen or so of us would line up on either end of a basketball court, with a cigarette in mouth (to light the fuses), a garbage can lid or folding lawn chair in one hand (as a shield), and pockets full of fireworks. We'd tape the roman candles to our shields, and light and toss the firecrackers like grenades (better watch the fuse burn down to 3 seconds first, or your firecracker would get thrown back at you). The bottle rockets were harder - you had to do a little aimed loft so that it would be at the apex of a gentle toss, pointing in the right direction when it fired. Done right, and the rocket would fire right into the opponent's crowd. Using a basketball court helped because they'd skip right off if you aimed low, and some people used that as a tactic. Having an off hand shield was essential, since the bottle rockets moved pretty fast, but not too fast to block if you saw it coming, and even if they exploded when they hit you it barely left a scorch. But the roman candles, those fkrs *burned.* Good thing they were slow and bright.
Of course we wore shorts. And no shirts. It was summertime in Florida.
OMG -- and wooden pallet bonfires... sometimes nightly. They used to just toss 'em out like trash. Nowadays pallets are almost as valuable as gold.
It's no surprise I grew up to be a rocket engineer... just about every rocket scientist I know is a major frikkin pyro.
