Surprising 70s tale of not suffocating.
As kids do, "let's play hide and seek" with my gang of local friends on an otherwise boring featureless summer afternoon at my folks' place when I was about 8.

There was enough garden/garage/bushes/trees to hide in or up but they'd mainly all been used before. BUT! In a fit of inspiration I realised that NO ONE would think to hide in my mum's car. Using the "count to 100" (1-2-3-4-5-20-30-60-100! COMING READY OR NOT) I got the car keys off the peg and ran to the car at the bottom of the drive.

Unlock the car, get in the car, oh no the windows....I'll be spotted. AHA! Get on the boot, no windows. The perfect hiding place.

Dash around the back, unlock the boot, scramble in and close the lid. Ha hah, they'll never find me. Ten minutes pass, silence. The findees are wandering past the car with the finder, I can hear them "Maybe he's gone in the house?" Glee glee glee I have outwitted them all.

They can't find me. I am all ready to burst out from my hiding place and SURPRISE THEM ALL, ha hah again!

How do you get out of a car boot from the inside? It's dark. I can't see anything. My searching fingers getting increasingly desperate can't figure out how to undo the lock from the inside- indeed it was not designed to be in a Mk 1 Ford Escort.

Oh dear. Oh dear indeed. Panic. HELP HELP HELP. No one heard. HELP HELP BANG BANG KICK on inside of boot lid. No one came. Flurry of blows, kicks and hits on the boot lid while yelling at the top of my lungs.

Finally over the sound of Grandstand on the TV, dad comes out to investigate the noise. Clocks what has happened -calls through the boot lid "Don't worry I'll just get the key and you'll be out of there in a jiffy."

Dad ambles calmly back to the key rack. Keys are missing. Dad looks around quickly then it dawns on him that I needed the keys to unlock the car. Comes back to the car.

"Have you got the keys in there with you?"

"Errrrrr......yes."

"With the leather keyfob on it?"

"Yes."

"Which also has the spare key on it?" (WHY?)

-Feels around in the dark-

"I think so."

Cue dad calling a locksmith to get the lid open before I suffocate.

Despite the fact I clearly recall the locksmith not drilling the lock but merely trying one after another of a dinner-plate sized keyrings' worth of at least 300 different master keys on, it took another 30 minutes or so to spring me.

Given that this was the 70s and kids were dying in abandoned fridges as hiding places, I consider myself quite lucky.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Wed 5 Mar 2014, 16:47, 19 replies)

A disappointingly tiny number of children died in fridges in the 1970s
Or from messing with fireworks, playing in abandoned factories, or retrieving footballs from electricity sub stations.

From the public information films you'd think it happened all the time.

In fact, I think statistically you were more likely to be kidnapped by a woman who looked like your Auntie Lilly and tortured to death on the moors by her psycho boyfriend.

Happier times.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 16:52, closed)

You forgot the slurry pits
and throwing rocks at trains.

*wasted youth*
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:00, closed)

We used to play in an ICI explosives factory.
Never did us any harm.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:24, closed)

It was a safer time, before paedos had been invented.
We used to light fires in a nearby alleyway, to frighten off glue-sniffers (the then bogeyman du jour, they'd make you sniff glue so you'd become one of them and make other kids sniff glue - probably the dullest apocalypse imaginable) - in retrospect, local residents were probably more annoyed about kids lighting fires, than they were about glue-sniffers.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:39, closed)

Still, those public information films must have done the trick, because they were still showing them in the late 90s/early 00s.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:07, closed)

I like the fact Grange Hill were trying to tell us to 'Just Say No' to drugs.
but no-one told Roland he should 'just say no' to Cakes.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:14, closed)

That's because cake is a made up drug.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 17:21, closed)

You know what, fuck you all, that was probably the funniest thing I've ever posted.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 22:22, closed)

Yah but it's in a thread I posted
on QOTW.

LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Thu 6 Mar 2014, 0:27, closed)

an obscure joke lifted from a tv show
bravo
(andythepieman Is surfing the waves of indifference on, Thu 6 Mar 2014, 15:44, closed)

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 6 Mar 2014, 16:09, closed)

Running with scissors.
You didn't mention running with scissors.
And hiding under a milk float.
( edjogs Collared doves are shit., Wed 5 Mar 2014, 22:10, closed)

Ugh Jesus, fridges
I always wondered what the fuck that was all about - after all, you can open a fridge with one hand from the outside, what's the difference? Yeah, well, then I found a fridge near my Gran's house from the sixties, when they put proper latches on the things. You'd have to have some kind of hydraulic press to escape from one of those bastards. Gave me this willies just looking at it.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 18:21, closed)

But ... right ... the way you get out of a fridge ... right ... is by not being thick enough to get in a fridge.
Did you get the willies at the idea of being thick enough to get into a fridge?
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 18:38, closed)

Perhaps they're hoping to be magically transported to some shithole in Canada.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 20:05, closed)

Setting for The Lion, the Witch and the BLT?

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 22:25, closed)

Even if he's found guilty at retrial, I don't think we can transport him.
( Happy Phantom has been to Hastings, Brighton, and Eastbourne too, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 22:57, closed)

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Wed 5 Mar 2014, 18:43, closed)

I've been watching this for several minutes now
and still have no idea what it means. I like it though. Maybe that's the point. I should stop looking for meaning in things and just enjoy the repetitive silliness of this .gif life.
( pineapplecharm D d M Y, H:i, Fri 7 Mar 2014, 12:19, closed)