What's the most expensive thing you broke as a kid and what's the story behind it?

Corroded@leminal.space to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 222 points –

Mine was our CRT TV. I would rapidly push the power button on and off because I thought the picture coming and going looked cool but eventually it fell inside of the TV. I think I later stuck a magnet on the TV.

Not looking for Reddit answers like "My parent's marriage"

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A brand new multi thousand dollar video camera that my pops had saved up for. I disassembled it entirely, just trying to figure out how it worked. He wasn’t even mad at me. I grew up and now can fix just about any electronic down to the component level. I like to think he saw the curiosity in me and was more proud than anything.

Huge respect for pops for not disassembling you.

For real. He could have very reasonably been very angry at me, and it might have defeated my curiosity before it really got a chance to get going, but by doing what he did, he associated it with good feelings that continued through until now.

When I was around 14, my parents got my sister and I a 2nd hand Xbox (the OG big square Xbox), but we were too poor to buy any games for it. I used to rent the games from blockbuster for three days at a time.

I was fascinated with electronics, I'd build little radio kits and LED chasers, I was okay with a soldering iron. I was researching mod chips online, to play burned games. The guides on installation emphasised how small all the solder points are, and how fine the wires are, that it's not a job for a beginner. But I thought it would be fine.

I tried to order a modchip online, but the site didn't deliver to Australia. I remember seeing people advertising in the news paper classifieds section modchipping services, so they must be available somehow. I called one of the guys, but he said he only sold them as part of installation, couldn't sell me just the modchip. I called a couple others, but none wanted to talk to a 14yo kid.

My parents caught wind of what I was trying to do, and they offered to pay to send it to the guy to get it done. So we just went with that. I was disappointed I didn't get to do the installation myself.

The next week, we got our Xbox back, turned it on, and played a couple of burned games, it worked great. But I was curious. Did the guy do a good installation job? What gauge wires did he use? Which brand and model modchip did he use? I was full of questions. So while my parents were out I opened the Xbox up, disassembled it right down to the motherboard. I found the modchip, I was fascinated by how small it was, how fine the wires were, and how tiny the solder points were. It all looked so fragile. It looked like the guy had done a pretty good job.

I put the Xbox back together, went to play it, but it wouldn't read any discs, not even genuine discs. Weird, did I forget to plug something back in on reassembly? I opened it up and found the disc drive cable was slightly unplugged. Plugged it in, reassembled, and tried it again. This time it read genuine discs, but it wouldn't play any burned discs. I tried for a while, and it was like the modchip wasn't working. That was when my parents got home. I was so angry and frustrated with myself, my mum asked what the matter was, and I started sobbing and crying furiously, I said "why can't I leave things alone?" and "Why do I always have to take things apart?" and "Why didn't I just enjoy the games?".

A couple days later I had calmed down enough, I opened the Xbox up again, and had another look. I saw the problem immediately. One of the tiny hair-like wires on the modchip had popped off. Maybe because of my previous poking around in there, or maybe it just came off by itself, idk. Luckily it was on the modchip side, not on the motherboard side, so there was a relatively large pad to solder it back onto. Still smaller than anything I'd soldered before, but I gave it a go. It took about an hour, with my oversized non-temperature-controlled soldering iron, but I got it soldered back in place. While was there I resoldered a couple wires alongside it, so they were more secure too. I was shaking with anticipation when I put it all back together yet again, and fired it up. It worked! Played burned games again! I was so happy I was crying. The awful low from days before transformed into an amazing high of achievement, and gratification.

My parents told me the lesson was to never take things apart, leave well enough alone. But they were wrong.the lesson was far greater. It gave me the self confidence to know I can fix things. Yes I can and will break things, but I can fix them. I somehow absorbed that into my identity. From then on I was always trying to fix things. Phone line died, I repaired it. Computer got a virus, I formatted and reinstalled the OS. Lawn mower wouldn't start, I cleaned and rebuilt the carburettor, didn't know what I was doing, but I just did it, because I had the confidence. Then at age 24 I got a job as an electronics repair technician, so it worked out for me.

That’s a great story! An Xbox mod chip was my first soldering job! It was a Team Xecutor chip, and I too used an old, terrible iron. I’m honestly not even sure how I did it, when I got more into soldering later, and looked up that chips installation process, I was amazed I was able to do it. My dad got me the mod chip even though he hated gaming because he thought correctly that it would be a great learning opportunity for me. He always supported my curiosities and hobbies. I’ve got to go thank him now. Thanks for sharing the story with me.

or he's doing the long con, and waiting till you buy something expensive so that he can disassemble it "out of curiosity" to test your reaction

Was it long enough ago that he could simply take it back to the store and have them reassemble it for him? Or did he reassemble it himself? Or did you try to reassemble it? You've left me hanging on the edge of my seat!

It was done for, he got another one but it wasn’t nearly as expensive. It wouldn’t be for quite a few more years before I learned how to non-destructively disassemble things, and I didn’t have access to many tools. I can barely remember now but I’m pretty sure I used a butter knife to get out screws and pry stuff open. I just didn’t understand how a little box could record videos and I had to try to figure it out. I was probably 7 or 8, based on where I lived when it happened.

I also put our phone in a bucket of water. My dad asked me to hold it but I was already carrying a bucket of water so I just put it in the bucket.

This actually got a good laugh out of me. I have a toddler, and I can see what you did totally made sense in your mind, and that it was dad's fault for not being specific enough with the instructions.

I set the majority of my mother's finest dresses on fire. I was very young. We had a powercut one night so we were using candles. It came back soon after, but i was still a curious boy with a candle in my hand. I wanted to go somewhere dark again so i went inside my closet and closed the door. My mom ran out of space in her room for her dresses so she put them on my closet. Only the stuff she didn't use often so it had the worst and the best. They were wrapped plastic and i was fascinated by how the plastic shrunk when the flame got close. But eventually I got too close and actually set it on fire. How did i react? Got out, shut the closet doors and went to watch tv. It's a miracle i didn't torch my whole house

That's such a great reaction to starting a fire in a closet full of priceless and flammable stuff! "Oops! I think I'll just close the door on that problem and hope no one notices."

I'm tempted to call it such a child's reaction to a problem they don't know how to solve. But I know I'm guilty of doing the same thing as an adult, just not with a potentially fatal raging closet fire fueled by a plastic coated wedding dress.

The more I think about it, the more in awe I become of what you managed to achieve.

Lol yeah as an adult I feel like I've done similar things. Not with a house fire or immediately life threatening scenario. But definitely like "well I don't really want to deal with that problem...I'm just going to walk away and hope it goes away" lol!!

How did i react? Got out, shut the closet doors and went to watch tv. It’s a miracle i didn’t torch my whole house

Lmao - reminds me of when I was in my early twenties and couldn't handle my beer. We had a few people around, and the toilet was occupied, so I threw up in a bucket and hid it in a closet and went back to the party. Cue to next morning, "Lads... why is there a bucket of-"

My sister and I figured out that we could draw. On the windshield of our neighbours car. Using stones.

...

In grade 2 I burnt down a shed causing $2000 damage in the 1970's. (Around $10,000 in todays money)

I was playing in the shed and decided I wanted to build a fireplace... out of wood. (In my defense it was a type of laminate, so I didn't know it was wood at the time.)

I nearly did something similar. My friend and I found a lighter and didn't want to get in trouble for burning stuff so we did it under his porch.

In grade 2

How old were you in grade 2?

If it’s anything like here (Canada), it’d be around 7-8yo.

Yup, and this was here in Canada.

I grew up in a very unorganized town that wasn't really regulated with traffic laws. I learned to drive a truck at about 12.

When I was 14 I was driving my dad's truck around town. I suddenly had the urge to see how well the brakes worked. I drove fast down a gravel road than slammed on the brakes as hard as I could. Within seconds it blew both front brake lines.

Later that same year in the winter I got the truck stuck on some ice. It wasn't bad, I just happened to stop on a very slippery patch of ice and couldn't move forward. I got the idea that as the tires spun, they were getting hot which meant it was melting the ice. If I did it long enough I would eventually get down to the gravel. I got impatient and spun the wheels faster smoking them like crazy while the engine roared. In the middle of the noise and smoke, a tire exploded and the truck jumped and deflated. I had blown out a tire.

Dad wasn't happy with me for a long while because the truck went to the shop and we had to pay a lot of money to get them fixed.

At the very least, I never made these mistakes again.

I'd argue that if pushing the brakes hard can blow up the brake lines, they already needed fixed.

I suspect i might be the winner here. My friend had an alley behind his house along with a nice strip of open land near a busy road. Eventually a strip mall was built and then another large commercial building started to go up. Being basically behind my friends house we walked over to this new building on weekend to check out the construction site.

The building was being built with cement block and had lots of scaffolding and yet-unused block scattered around. I found a pipe-bender - a very heavy tool made out of high quality steel - and found you could just tap on of these cement blocks and it would shatter to pieces. I was fascinated, as were my friends. I have no idea how many cement blocks we destroyed over the next couple of days, but it was a huge number. Then we decided to see if we could go through a wall with the pipe bender... we could indeed, making a hole in the side of the building we could walk through. Looking around we eventually realized what we'd done was awful.... we had decimated this construction site. We finally slinked away and come Monday when the crew returned, police were called and neighbors interrogated but thankfully with privacy fences all around, none of the neighbors saw anything. 11 and 12 yr olds are stupid.

An arcade center VR headset.

This was in the 90s or early 2000 when VR was non existent to consumers. During holidays visiting the US we ended up in this arcade center, probably in LA, where they had circled booths with an old FPS VR game that you play standing up. The headset looked like a helmet and was plugged from the top.

During my game, I turned on myself (360 no scope style) so much and always in the same direction that the cables got tangled and finally broke, probably with a little spark and some electrical sound. Game over.

As a French preteen, my English was bad and all I remember is the "shiiiiiiit" the worker said when he looked at the headset and cables.

Sorry buddy 🤷🏻‍♂️

Was it this thing? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuality_(product)

I paid $5 USD as a kid to play this thing at the mall, which was a fortune to me, but I loved stuff like this so much I thought it was worth it. The game was so shitty I couldn't even tell wtf was going on or what I was supposed to do. Just randomly floating through a sea of polygons until the guy said time was up.

Yeah it looked a lot like the first picture in the Wikipedia article.

I don't remember the game but I couldn't understand shit as well nor the graphic style.

Crashed the family car on my first day driving. Into our house. Our driveway is a mini hill with a turn to get in and then loop to the side with the corner of the house being at the corner. Accelerating up the little hill meant the house jumped in front of the car! As it was my first time driving, the blame was placed. Firmly on dad, as teacher.

Luckily the damage wasn't too bad to repair, but still the two most expensive things were broken on one day.

This text feels so like AI.

Lol, probably the spellcheck inputs. I also have a new keyboard that means muscle memory is a bit off.

I am not a robot. Promise. But that's what a robot would say.

I broke the screen on my laptop, but that was only after having it for like five or six years. And even after that, I still used it as a closet web server for years after that with SSH.

Edit: I think I was about 16 when that happened.

I pushed the largest TV off a window ledge at an electricals store because I wanted to watch the TV, so I put myself between the TV and the window. Obviously I’d never lifted a TV before and had no idea about their centre of balance. Because it wasn’t tied down properly the store was reprimanded and my poor mother didn’t have to fork out. I think I was around 4 or 5

Was going through some semi-justified teenage angst stuff back in the day and my laptop was having some small issue, so I smashed my laptop.

I'm not normally prone to anger - then or now, so that was particularly out of character for me. I also wasn't able to replace it for a long while, since I wasn't like, rich or anything like that.

Honestly though, I've never regretted it. Given the circumstances (tl;dr: poor upbringing, loneliness), I can totally see why someone would lash out like that eventually.

I mean, you could regret it, but also offer yourself understanding and forgiveness

it sounds like that laptop had it coming, for the sheer neglect and poor upbringing it inflicted

I'm not sure how much my brother costs, but the three of us brothers were running across the top of monkey bars and jump kicking each other. I kicked my youngest brother off and he busted his head on the ground. It's ~40 years later and he still has the scar on the back of his head.

the garage. I was 6 or 7, my mom was undergoing a major health situation and the medication wasn't doing her mental processes any favors. One morning she was running late and so asked me to start her car. I'd never started a car in my life, I had no idea what to do and I couldn't reach the pedals so I asked my younger sibling to help out. I stayed on the floor and operated the pedals, my sibling was in charge of the key.

mind you, this was a stickshift and it was parked in the driveway, facing the garage door.

I have no idea what we actually did, I only remember the crashes as we went through the garage door and through the back wall. The front of the car now blocking the alley, we yanked the key ran to hide because we had just taken down a fucking building ruined mom's new car, and thought we were going to be killed. Of course she instantly realized what happened and knew that she was at fault so when she found us we were of course in no trouble; but man, what a ride that was...

Your mom broke the garage. That was absolutely irresponsible of her, not you, you were trying to help out which is really sweet.

And I mean what was the goal here anyway? Even when running late the 3 seconds it takes to start a car will hardly make any difference.

She takes full responsibility but in her defense, the meds she was on really did a number on her, especially as a single mom.

My grandparent's desktop computer. I didn't break the hardware, but i set the default font size in windows 98 to some ludicrously high value. That made it so large the OS became unusable and the dialog to change it back was also unusable. Probably a quick terminal command would have fixed it within a couple seconds but I wasn't old enough to understand that and my parents weren't very tech-savvy.

That reminds me of when people would enter a keyboard combination to flip the screen of the computers at school. I think the IT department ended up removing those computers.

My grandparents had a lot of antiques, some probably which they inherited. My grandfather was particular proud of his clockwork wind-up clock (which was an antique even back then). I disassembled it to find out how it worked, but couldn't figure out how to reassemble it (and my granddad couldn't either).

I'm not sure about "expensive", but it was priceless.

My mom had a really gorgeous piece of petrified wood about the size of a cup coaster and as a young kid I was obsessed with it. So one day I broke into her jewelry box where she kept it and stole it to bring to school for show and tell. Everything was fine until I was getting on the bus to go home and I tripped with it in my hand. It shattered like glass and so did my poor little heart.

I remember crying all the way home where I tearfully confessed to my thievery and apologized up and down to my mom. She honestly wasn't very angry, and was a lot more understanding than I thought she might be. I don't remember what happened to the wood afterwards but I don't remember seeing it ever again so I wonder if she trashed it? It was so beautiful, so that would be a total shame.

When I was around 12, I was learning about overclocking, and accidentally killed my dad's graphic card, an Nvidia FX 5900.

I vividly remember launching The Sims 2 to test my overclock, when suddenly the screen started turning on and off (the video driver was probably crashing and restarting), and after I reset the PC, there were 2 green lines on the screen and XP was stuck in 640x480 16 colors because not even the basic display driver was able to load.

My dad was mad obviously because it was an expensive card, the damage wasn't covered by the warranty, and he was into gaming too at the time. I was stuck with integrated graphics for about a month while we waited for the geforce 6000 series to come out.

I was so scared of overclocking after this happened, I didn't try it again until a few years later years later when I had my own computer (and killed another card, a 9800GX2).

Before you learn about overclocking, you must first learn about cooling.

Well that and only boosting a little at a time. Generally you’ll see crashes and corruption long before you’ll kill a card, if you can avoid swinging for the fences.

Kitchen window. About 2x3 metres if I remember right.

We had a trampoline in our backyard, outside the kitchen so mum could watch us while cooking or whatever. There was a huge hill (our house was in a bit of a mountainous area), and we decided to throw some rocks down the hill and bounce them off the trampoline… but we were uncoordinated 10 year olds so we missed every time. And it was just a bunch of little stones gathering in our backyard.

Then I found one rock. Pretty big, had to lift it with two hands and shot-put it down the hill. That was the one that we finally landed on the trampoline. And it bounced right through the kitchen window.

Sigh...

When I was in the 3rd grade, our class had to do reports on countries around the world and we were all assigned a country. I got Egypt. Coincidentally, some friends of my parents had recently gotten back from a trip to Egypt. My parents asked their friends if there was anything I could bring in to use for my presentation. They let me borrow this little statue they got. It was an eagle with a hat, I think it was a depiction of Horus. It was carved out of some really nice white stone, maybe marble or something? I brought it into school, put it on my desk, and waited patiently to stand up and do my report. When I stood up, I bumped my desk, and the statue fell to the ground and broke in half.

Now monetarily this may not have been the most "expensive" thing, but it was the souvineer that this family brought back from Egypt that they had on their mantle to always remember the trip. It was priceless.

Why the fuck would you let a 7 year old bring your breakable souvineer to school for a class project?

Anyway, those people stopped being friends with my parents after that, so I have a feeling it was either expensive or meant a lot.

This hurts me to think about. Why did you have to ask this question?

I know it's not as expensive as some others here, but a basement window. I was a latchkey kid, and one afternoon I'd come home from school and taken the dog out for a walk. When we got home, some neighborhood kids showed up and we were playing in the backyard with the dog, and I didn't get around to unlocking the house. And then somehow I lost my keys. I knew my folks would be furious with me for goofing off and losing my keys rather than doing my homework, so I was laser focused on getting inside the house. I took a pipe and broke a basement window, planning to climb inside, let the dog in, and then find a way to fix the window without my parents knowing. (I don't remember what I was planning to do about the lost keys.) And of course, the minute I broke the window, they pulled into the driveway and saw what was going on, and I was grounded for like an eon after that. I'm in my 40s and they still bring it up now and then. My dad replaced the windowpane himself but he was too grumpy to show me how, lol.

Overall, it's a pretty stupid story!

I know it was different times, but if my kid was so afraid of not doing homework to the point of breaking into the house through the basement window, I would consider it a huge failure on my side.

Oh yeah, I hear ya - my mother had no chill. She flew off the handle over the smallest things. I moved out as soon as I could and was estranged from them for several years.

An antique crystal vase my parents received as a wedding gift.
I was maybe in my tweens and bought flowers for some occasion (a birthday or anniversary maybe) and the florist said I should use boiling water to keep them fresh (yes, it is a thing), but obviously I misunderstood, and not knowing any better I added the boiling water directly in to the vase (which I chose because it was my favourite) and of course it exploded in my hand. Lucky I wasn't hurt, and I did manage to glue some of it back together, but I was not getting away with it. My mother was furious.

I'm not even a tween and I still don't understand what they meant for you to do. Are the flowers supposed to be in soil, and you're supposed to just water the soil with a bit of boiling water?

I mean, as an adult, I'd probably check if the material could hold boiling water...but even that's not 100% if it seemed ceramic or something, haha

Maybe boiled water, like water that has been boiled and is now cooled off again

Ahh... to disinfect it or something in a place where the water might not be fully clean?

Yup, that's what google told me. It removes some of the bad stuff that might be in the water

You say you'd check, but couldn't look up "boiling water flowers" before replying here? At least when this happened I had the excuse of not having the internet yet (and being a literal child, following the obviously unclear instructions of a professional, to the best of my understanding)..

https://www.sarahraven.com/articles/the-basics-of-arranging-cut-flowers

Yes, I'd check about putting boiling water somewhere, but not googling before writing that comment. The comment allowed me to express solidarity with you that it was an easy mistake to make.

Reminds me of a story of my parents. They were in Venice for their anniversary and had rented a room above a glass maker. One morning he wanted to show them how beautiful the morning light looked as it falls through this huge glass pyramid he had made. An enormous thing. One of his master pieces. Super expensive and also super heavy. He dropped it and it shattered into a million pieces.

I still have the crystal they got me as a souvenir. It makes nice rainbow colours when the sunlight falls through.

At least it wasn't you who did it, and you got a cool gift out of it lol

Our barnstable. I burned it accidentally. About half a million damage. Though the new barnstable was an upgrade.

When I was 6 I microwaved a metal measuring cup full of water, which ended up arcing and burning out the transformer. Apparently it fucked up my parents' finances for a while at the time

I have a similar story, when I was young I had this weekly science magazine that would come in the mail.

The one page showed a match lit in a microwave with a glass measuring cup to catch the hot plasma. I obviously tried it because it looked cool. When my mother heard the microwave making all kinds of noises she opened it up and pulled out the measuring cup not realising that its really hot, she dropped it and it shattered all over.

I destroyed the microwave and the measuring cup.

Apparently it fucked up my parents' finances for a while at the time

What year was this?

Early 2000s. My dad is a farmer and it was a rough year for the harvest. It didn't help that my parents were pretty poor for a long time, and didn't seem to recover until after their divorce during the 2008-9 financial crises

I don’t mean to pry, but… their divorce made them more financially stable?

Eventually. My dad saw an improvement with corn and soybean yields for multiple years in a row in a very strong market, as well as getting his crane operator license so he could move grain bins and paying off several debts. My mom moved to the same town as her job, got some promotions, picked up a couple weekend gigs bartending at the local bar, and heavily subsidized groceries by going to meat raffles.

I broke my dad's laptop by dropping it on the ground. I was pretending to work, with my parents right there.

But honestly, all the other little stuff that I broke combined probably cost more than that laptop. Recently I changed the battery of the clock and it immediately stopped working. It's like I have the hands of destruction.

Laptops used to be better built back in my day. You used to open up the case, cradle it out of its straps, pull the analog wires to attenuate the device correctly, apply the friction resin to the input rod, and finally place it underneath your chin and play it.

I don't understand modern laptops these days

We call people like you passion fingers.

"They fuck every thing they touch"

VHS player when I was a toddler. Was in the daycare and saw a cord, so naturally I pulled it. It was on top of the TV, which was bolted to the wall high up. Shattered on impact. Nearly fell on my head too.

I put a sandwich in the slot... Twice. I distinctly remember thinking how perfectly it fit. Didn't bust, but wasn't a good idea.

Dec 20, 1985

My dad drive into our driveway with his brand new 1986 Porsche 944 Turbo. After showing me and my little brother, his brand new car, he then broke the news that our Christmas would be a “little light this year.” I put an entire bag of sugar in his gas tank that night.

His Christmas was a little light that year, the fuck.

Edit: Oh, hell yes, I absolutely told him I did it. On Christmas morning.

Edit 2: as an adult, I still think it’s one of the most awesome cars I’ve ever known (my fav car is still the BMW 2002, tho). He got a new one - the fuck - and I later learned how to drive stick in that car. He has still never forgiven me, although I have still never forgiven him for what he did then or in the decades following. We haven’t spoken in years.

As the years go by, I only grow more proud of my 6 year-old self for punishing that selfish fuck for putting himself before his kids/family. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Also, my mom laughed about it at the time and always has since.

Me : Kicked a football into our neighbour's dining room. Said sorry . Dad fixed it for them. A week later , again kicked it into their dining room. Got an earful . Never took penalties from that spot again.

My bro : Climbed on top of our TV at home like King Kong and the table broke. Him, the TV and the table all came down. My dad was as mad as godzilla.

I noticed that the computer was magnetic and played with magnets around it. The hard drive was totally wiped. Now my parents could have reinstalled the operating system but they just got a new computer instead.

An electric keyboard imported from outside of soviet block. I was too young and stupid to understand the power brick and conected it directly to mains. A shower of sparks tought me an important lesson about electricity and voltage.

Oh man, that reminds me of the time that I was trying to record a demo for my friends band. They had a PA system, and apparently the 1/4 cable that went from the main speaker to the other carried power. I didn't know this. I plugged it into the sound card on my PC. I'm super lucky that all it did was fry my sound card. It died so fast.

When I was a teenager my dad got a beautiful marble chess board. It was leaning on a wall, and when I picked it up it broke into two halves.

My dad was really sad and angry at me, that board meant quite a deal to him. He always thought I mishandled it, regardless how I said I was careful.

He died last November.

I got sent a few boxes with his belongings, and when I opened one of them I found that chessboard. It is glued with epoxy.

It sits in my apartment now, and I still don't know if I want to keep it or get rid of it. One one hand it meant a lot to him, on the other hand it is one of the very rare things where I felt treated unfairly.

I'd say that you should keep it.

Except if you have anything of similar value already in posession in which case I can't argue against or in favor.

They used to make these things called "Shrinky-Dinks", which were sheets of thick plastic that you would color with pencils, then cut them out and stick them in the oven and they would shrink down to a smaller size.

Well one day when I was 3, I decided I could do this by myself, except that I put them in the toaster oven on the grate on like 400 degrees. Of course that shit melted through the grate and onto the heating element inside the toaster oven. Thankfully my parents noticed the smell before a fire started. Not sure how much a toaster oven cost in the '80s, but they had to get a new one one.

"The Electric Company" came on TV, so of course we were dancing around the TV in excitement ... and knocked it over. Crash!

What is "The Electric Company" ?

My kid stuck a big ol donut magnet on our TV and ruined the screen.

I really, really liked disassembling stuff, and then not knowing how to reassemble. The most regrettable thing I disassembled was probably the Wii U. It would be nice to still have one, but I also really don't feel like buying one, so, yeah.

Jesus maybe? At church during the Christmas service. Accidentally dropped it. No clue how much it was worth, but I don't remember breaking particularly expensive things.

I broke a microwave when I was little because I didn't know I had to remove my fork from my plate of broccoli, then proceeded to accidentally break the garbage disposal trying to dispose of the broccoli because I didn't know broccoli couldn't go down the disposal.

Wait, why can't broccoli go down the disposal?

Certain materials found in foods, such as an overabundance of fiber, clog and damage the blades in the garbage disposal. Broccoli is at the top of this list.

I've never heard this before. If broccoli isn't allowed I'm surprised anything is!

I didn't break something expensive in terms of dollar amount, but my Mom knits. In high school she asked me to do the laundry for her while she was out of town. I knew sweaters went in the delicate cycle, but what I DIDN'T know is even the delicate cycle was too much for her very nice, hand knit, cashmere sweater that fit her perfectly.

It came out felted and 2 sizes smaller. And I felt HORRIBLE then. Now, I'm all grown up and I've learned how to knit myself. Now I think back on that and marvel that I'm still alive and she didn't come home and just bury me in the backyard. That's how I know she loves me. <3

I feel like, depending on your age at the time, this is more on her than you. I’m an adult, and I don’t buy myself clothes that can’t handle the normal setting on my washer and dryer. I know it would be a case of when, not if, I’d forget. No way I’d trust a child to pay attention to something like that.

So in her defense (and another aspect of why she didn't murder me I'm sure.) Is that she'd forgotten entirely that she even wore that sweater. Apparently it always sits on the edge of her hamper so she visually sees it and removes it to her special wash bag for extremely fancy clothes. But she'd left town in a bit of a hurry for family matters and I'd even volunteered to do laundry. I didn't realize that sweater was extra special on my own.

That "on the side of the hamper" method is what I use for my extremely delicate stuff now, and so far I haven't shrunk anything. yet

Have you hand-knitted her a cashmere sweater that fit her perfectly? What am I saying, that was probably why you learned knitting.

Sadly I was never able to perfectly recreate that cashmere sweater, though I came close. Getting perfect gauge is really hard to do on fitted garments for knitting. Mom had wanted me to learn to knit since I was really little but it never caught my interest until I was an adult. Through the pandemic we did work together to knit a modular blanket and sewed it together once we could meet up in person again! https://imgur.com/a/u4M4ynb

As a 10 year old I drove our car into a tree. It didn't quite break though

My ex's brother released the hand break when he was a kid left alone in the car for 5 minutes. Rolled into the wall of store his parents were buying groceries

I just turned on the car while it was in gear. No clutch or anything. It more or less jumped into the tree and died. I thought i had killed it!

Xmas ornament my parents got of QVC or something. I fell into(onto?) the mantelpiece because I'm clumsy and I was much younger at the time and I knocked it off. It was actually my favourite ornament too.

A motorcycle back in the late 90s when I was like 9 or 10?

We were at a dealership because my dad was thinking about buying a motorcycle. At one point, they put my younger brother on a motorcycle because it was cute or whatever. After they took him off the bike, and my parents and the salesguy moved onto another motorcycle, I wanted to try. So I did. And I tried to be careful, knowing it could fall over.

Getting on was no issue. And getting off was no problem either. Until I was like a few feet away from the bike..and it fell over. Shattered the windshield.

Even though it was an accident, the dealer tried to get my parent's to pay up. And I think my parents would've been willing to pay something...except the dealer wanted, I believe, $800. The bike was probably only a few thousand bucks -- I actually have no clue how much the bike was, but, as an adult, I know how much bikes are. No way a windshield was a third of the price of the bike. Not in the 90s, not today. So my dad and the dealer got into a shouting match. We left, and the dealer tried to get our license plate number as we drove off.

Nothing ever happened with that. No cops were called or anything, as far as we know. Besides, the dealer should have insurance for these situations. But since I wasn't supposed to be on the bike in the first place...I got in tons of trouble. Got my ass beat by my mom, got grounded, couldn't go to a sleepover I was supposed to go to...

Definitely the most expensive thing I broke. At least based on what the dealer was demanding.

Not sure, but if the windshield shattered there's probably damage to other parts too. If the bike had side farings those would probably crack too and need to be replaced. If not, the engine could have touched the ground, and replacing once of the sides of your engine isn't cheap either.

The handlebars could be damaged, the forks could be out of whack. Everything needs to be checked to make sure it's still safe to drive.

800 dollar may not be the damage that was there, but if you take into account the hours the mechanic has to spent checking and fixing the bike, the bill adds up quickly.

Source: dropped my bike. Around 1200 euro damage. That was not a fun experience.

Oof. Sorry to hear that happened. Vehicle repairs suck.

I do remember my parents talking about $800 for the windshield specifically, but maybe they were just simplifying out of anger. With the dealer, with me, whoever. It very well could've been the estimate for the total damage. I can certainly imagine some dents and scratched paint. And yeah labor is often the highest cost.

I was probably 9 or 10 at the time, visiting at a (wealthy) friends house, and my friend was showing me a bunch of his dads cool stuff, among which was a legitimate whip, like straight up indiana jones style. Naturally, I had to try it out…indoors…underneath the crystal chandelier hanging in their entryway…I wasn’t allowed over anymore after that.

crystal chandelier... yikes, you did them a favour.

As a kid, I kinda had anger issues and would get frustrated easily. I broke the screen of my GBA SP by throwing it against a wall after not being able to solve a room in Mario vs. Donkey Kong. Similarly, I threw my iPod Touch on the floor after losing in a game called Bad Apples which broke the glass but the iPod itself still worked afterwards.

I really wish I still had that SP, as replacing the screen isn't that hard. It even was a limited edition one as well...

You guys could've fixed that! You'd just have to open it up to reset or replace the button and hit the Degauss in the settings (assuming it had the option)!

Nothing big tbh.

A car window, or a record player would be it, I'm just not sure which cost more.

They were both accidents, though the car window was ab accident due to stupidity rather than a completely innocent act that went wrong.

The record player, I was just trying to play one of my 45s, and the arm snapped off. I don't really remember applying much pressure, and I was about 5 or 6, so it wasn't like I was a powerhouse. My dad didn't get it repaired, so no clue what monetary cost would have applied. He ended up buying a better one second hand from my uncle, which was about 150 back in the eighties, so not cheap but not crazy either.

The car window was my dumb kid ass chucking rocks with my sister. Now, the dumb part was throwing them in the direction of the cars at all, but me and my sister were both pretty damn young, and I had no idea I could throw a small rock that far. Maybe the size of a dime. Wouldn't have thrown that direction if I had thought I could hit anything.

Again, not sure what the actual cost was because my dad never said. But it was enough that he couldn't make a trip to go to a wedding up north, so there's that as a rough idea.

Other than that, I was not a destructive kid, nor a reckless one. Anything else I ever broke was genuinely something where it would have broken for anyone, or was just a result of a kid not having perfect balance and control. You drop shit when you're a kid, but it was always minor stuff.

Nothing extremely expensive. Just a DS. That, or an old Asus laptop I had that ran horrible windows 8. With the laptop, Best Buy geek squad had said how the best course of action would have been just buying a new computer rather than fixing it. Don't remember all the damage, but it wouldn't even boot if I remember correctly.

Some kind of fancy antique vase, a friend taught me to make a how to fold a really good paper dart and was throwing it all around the house and it hit it and knocked it over 😂

I once broke my neighbor's sliding glass doors with rocks.

A neighbor kid and I were really stupid when we were 9-10 years old, and my next door neighbor's house had been empty for a while because they rented it out. So we thought it would be a good of fun idea to go through the broken fence between our yards, and chuck the decorative rocks (pretty big ones, not pebbles) at the glass and make it shatter. We broke one open, and then another, then went inside to check out the empty place. We started to go at the third one when my brother came outside and heard the loud smashing.

Cops were called, in the end both of us were very apologetic and told them everything.

Our very expensive fridge. My dad beat the living shit out of me. I still remember the beating 35 years later.

How did you break a fridge?

Hell if I remember the details. That was like 35 years ago. I think I was pretending that I was fixing it? Lol

My dad's truck, I thought it would be a great Idea to clean his motor. Got into the electrical system. He never told me how much it was, but, as an adult I could only imagine.

I broke my own spirit. The story is basically my mother was herself broken and found my energy threatening, so I broke myself to make her comfortable.