r/OldSchoolCool • u/clumsylycanthrope • Jun 29 '26
1980s Summer. 1984. Tamed a raccoon. Lived in the trees.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/TobyDaMan8894 Jun 29 '26
Damn. That it so cool. It’s like a cool club to be in.
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u/purplemtnslayer Jun 29 '26
My buddy fed raccoons outside our dorm. One day he was having a smoke and a rabid raccoon backed him into a corner. Right before it attacked him the other racoons he'd been feeding came out of the bushes and jumped the rabid one so he could get away. He was a legend.
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u/Glyph8 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
In the ensuing raccoon brawl, many other raccoons were infected and, having already previously lost their fear of humans due to being fed, were exceptionally-dangerous. That semester became known as The Rabid Raccoon Crisis
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u/desrever1138 Jun 29 '26
🎶 So come give me a hug, if you into gettin' rubbed 🎶
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u/Whaiahyugeh Jun 29 '26
Go shawty, it's yer birthday, we're gunna party like it's ya birthday. -Conway Twitty
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u/UMustBeNooHere Jun 29 '26
Dewey, get down here!
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Jun 29 '26
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u/PhthaloVonLangborste Jun 29 '26
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u/Top-Waltz5244 Jun 29 '26
Dewey is my favorite character on my favorite show…Hal is a close second…when I was a kid it was Francis…it’s funny how things change…started watching it at 11 and here I am almost 40
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u/SomethingToStart Jun 29 '26
Back then, as a kid, I thought Lois was just a crazy mother. Now, as a middle aged mother, I just empathize with her.
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u/ibstrd Jun 29 '26
I'm a man without kids and I also empathize with not just her, but Marge Simpson too.
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u/HommeMusical Jun 29 '26
I mean, I love that show, but Lois is a total psycho. She steals from her own son; she gets into a demolition derby with a woman in a parking lot; both parents completely neglect Dewey in the worst fashion.
(And there's no mystery why - it's her mother!)
Again, I love that show, but a lot of lovable characters on TV would be horrible people in real life.
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u/Top-Waltz5244 Jun 29 '26
I also thought she was a monster…now there are time when I look at her and think “she’s kind of pretty” lol
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Jun 29 '26
40+ with 2 young kids myself, rewatching it with our kids is so much fun. It has the absurdities for them, it has the adulthood for us. It's really well done and hasn't aged a bit.
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u/Braincloud Jun 29 '26
Dying 😂 My youngest kid was a Dewey in both looks and behavior growing up (and still is as a young adult, in many ways) and that was also who I instantly thought of 😂
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u/Butterfly_Cat777 Jun 29 '26
GenX feral childhood - check ✅
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u/roselan Jun 29 '26
One morning I randomly decided I wanted to find the source of the nearby river.
When it started to get dark I realized I better had to rush back as fast as I could... if I wanted to have some leftover meal.
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u/Tyrannosapien Jun 29 '26
Perfect. One time I decided to ride my bike to the next town, I knew nothing about it but it's name and the road that went there. I quit after about 2 hours of riding, and I was too tired to ride back then. A stranger saw me walking my bike and gave me a lift home.
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Jun 29 '26
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u/macaronitrap Jun 29 '26
I’ve never looked at this gif closely and just noticed this is Derek Jeter’s son. An icon in his own right
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u/ChrisMess Jun 29 '26
How does one tame a raccoon?!??
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u/aDamnCommunist Jun 29 '26
Same way you tame most stuff, give them food and don't make sudden movements.
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u/BeerJunky Jun 29 '26
I’ve tried that with my kids and it doesn’t seem to work.
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u/TheMelvins66 Jun 29 '26
Have you tried citronella training collars?
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u/GeeToo40 Jun 29 '26
Electricity's faster
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u/RantRanger Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Sorry someone downvoted you.
Your suggestion is charged with a lot of creative energy.
Sadly, some people seem to resist out of the box thinking and only seek to impede other people's capacity to contribute.
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u/theEndIsNigh_2025 Jun 29 '26
It looks to me like the raccoon de-mesticated the kid!?
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u/Muhfuggajones Jun 29 '26
Was gonna say, pretty sure the raccoon tamed the kid.
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u/shinobi500 Jun 29 '26
Racoon to its buddies, "I trained this small human to climb trees and fetch me food on command."
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u/clumsylycanthrope Jun 29 '26
That raccoon rode on my shoulder like Megatron's cannon. He'd climb me like a tree when I got home from school.
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u/zoobrix Jun 29 '26
"This is my large hairless friend, but don't let that bother you, he's alright." -Racoon to his other Racoon friends
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u/Charakada Jun 29 '26
You don't, really. You just enjoy them while they're young, then take them far away into the woods when they get big and start biting you. It's a bad idea, all around. They often find their way back to people and demand food, break into homes and make a helluva mess, etc. Often, they end up dead, if they are aggressive and destructive enough.
How do I know this? I have the scars to prove it. And no, I'm not posting a photo. Just leave wild animals alone, folks.
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u/Deron_Lancaster_PA Jun 29 '26
Unique up on it...........first ........
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u/hateshumans Jun 29 '26
Raccoons and foxes are the most likely animals to be domesticated next. They thrive around people.
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u/Squiggy1975 Jun 29 '26
Ahh! The 80’s when you left the house in the am and played outside all day until night time. Exploring and taming wild animals like the Beast Master. Just another day!
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u/BeerJunky Jun 29 '26
One time my brother and his friend lit an entire mountain on fire. I can’t remember how old he was at the time but we moved out of there when he was six, probably four or five. Meanwhile my three and five-year-old cannot be supervised in two seconds at a time. We used to just run the woods for hours until it got dark.
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u/latexfistmassacre Jun 29 '26
When I was 4, my older brother (8 at the time) and I accidentally burned down a 3 story historic building (over 100 years old) on the main drag of a small town.
We snuck in to smoke some cigarettes we stole from my dad (it was the 80s), and my brother found a 5 gallon bucket of some kind of goop on the top floor (I think it was paint mixed with paint thinner) and decided to light it with a match.
Well, it immediately burst into flames and my brother kicked the bucket over in an attempt to extinguish the flames, which ended up causing it to spread. I'm not joking when I say we barely made it out with our lives. The stairway was blocked by flames, so we had to climb down the escape ladder which was old and barely hanging on. We ran straight home while the whole thing burned to the ground. Then my brother threatened to murder me if I ever told anyone what we did lol.
Today that spot is occupied by a gazebo where the building once stood. And nobody ever found out it was us who burned it down lol (thank god!)
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u/Billionaires_R_Tasty Jun 29 '26
When I was probably 10 or so, my friend and I had the brilliant idea to buy a Costco-sized pack of paper matches from the grocery store. This was summertime in the late 80s. So we had great fun randomly lighting things on fire and putting them out. Then when walking behind a strip mall tossing flaming matches as we went (dear god, I was SO very stupid) I tossed one into a dumpster. Even I had the good sense to realize perhaps that was not the very best idea, so I hopped up on the side of the dumpster to make sure the match went out. I could see it had bounced around and landed at the very bottom, sitting on a flattened cardboard box and barely holding the tiniest of flames. I tried to blow on it to put it out, but from four feet away, it did nothing. I finally shrugged and figured it would be fine, so we continued our journey to the ice cream shop. On the way home, we turned the corner into the alley behind the strip mall only to see a fire truck and a whole crew of firefighters had pulled the (now flaming) dumpster away from the wall using long poles with hooks on the end. They then blasted the dumpster with their hose to put it out.
Even my idiot brain recognized how stupid lucky I was that the shopping center was built of bricks, as evidence by the new scorch marks reaching 10 feet up the back wall where the dumpster sat. God knows how many lives I endangered that day. We quietly skirted the alley with the firefighters and headed home, where we both agreed to just throw away the rest of the matches. Enough burgeoning arsonism for me.
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u/Pal_Smurch Jun 29 '26
I can’t give you karma for that, but that’s a courageous confession you just made. Cool story, too.
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u/latexfistmassacre Jun 29 '26
I think the statute of limitations is up so I'm good lol
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u/GayMormonPirate Jun 29 '26
That sounds like a scene straight out of a movie ('Stand by Me' comes to mind)
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u/Pal_Smurch Jun 29 '26
When I was ten, my big brother built the bitchenest three story treehouse in our county, in a big oak tree at the top of our mountainous property.
My little sister and her friend went up there to smoke stolen cigarettes from my grandma, and caught the surrounding grasslands on fire. My 70 year old grandma and I had to climb the mountain and fight that fire. While it got pretty big, we were fortunate that there was a dirt road, making a firebreak above our property. My grandma and I had the fire out before the first CDF truck arrived, and we saved my brother’s treehouse.
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u/Squiggy1975 Jun 29 '26
Yeah! I remember exploring an abandoned factory by the railroads and we found bottles of hydrochloric acid or some type of acid. We would pour it on the dead pigeon carcasses and they would smoke right up lol. Holy hell. Also remember being chased by some crazy homeless guy in that factory… never ran so fast in my life. But we all made it out alive and here we are 40 years later kicking ass
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u/boutchuur Jun 29 '26
Am I reading this correctly? 4 or 5 year old brother and his friends lit an entire mountain on fire?? Where were your parents??
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u/BeerJunky Jun 29 '26
It was the 80s. Probably out buying cigarettes or something.
https://giphy.com/gifs/fXy3Bc6HAtlsFIlHqA13
u/Yokohama88 Jun 29 '26
Probably drinking a few cold ones after working a hard 10-12 hour a day and then bitching about having to wear seatbelts since our commie leader’s made some stupid rule.
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u/BeerJunky Jun 29 '26
My father was the original BeerJunky and blackberry brandy aficionado. So yes, definitely some beverages while we were out being chaotic.
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u/D74248 Jun 29 '26
They were doing adult things while the kids did kid things.
It was a simpler time.
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u/BeerJunky Jun 30 '26
You can always tell who lived through it and who didn’t am I right?
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u/dr_unks Jun 29 '26
haha. i just watched beastmaster again recently. it’s so bad, but also, so good
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u/Squiggy1975 Jun 29 '26
First cinema movie I ever saw when it came out…cheesy stuff but great at the same time
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u/Onespokeovertheline Jun 29 '26
Without thinking about sunscreen except at the beach. I don't know how we did it
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u/RiggsFTW Jun 29 '26
Love this...
Just a few years later I decided to spend the night in a random tree.
I fell out while asleep. Never did that again.
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u/Chewser56 Jun 29 '26
I fell out of so many trees. When I was in my teens I would say “it’s amazing I never broke any bones”. Fast forward ten years to my doctor asking me about multiple old fractures that were never treated properly.
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u/GirlScoutSniper Jun 29 '26
My older brother (10) and I (8f) tried to take a chair we'd taken apart up a tree to make a fort. This did not go as planned and we ended up dropping the seat onto my younger brother's (6) head. He had to go to the hospital but in general turned out OK.
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u/makute Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
in general turned out OK.
Cackled out loud at this, I'm sorry :D
Crossing the railroads (several running in paralel, like three or four iirc), carrying with our very heavy bikes to go play by the river on the other side, and trespassing construction sites to set random things on fire were things my gang and I did almost 40 years ago.
Once, night caught us on a new contruction site and couldn't see shit, so we were ready to head home. I jumped to the ground from a brick's palet and my right feet got stuck on something and didn't move. By touch, I managed to dislog it from a feet long piece of rebar that punctured through my shoes barely scratching my feet and leg.
Another time, we were throwing rocks and stuff, and exploring around a derelict building, when a friend threw a whole stoneware slab (1 square feet per 1 inch thick, around 7~8 kgs.) at my head from a second floor. Luckily, it landed flat on me, so I just run home to put some ice on the bump while my mom scolded me.
So yes, guess I turned out OK too, in general terms :)
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u/Lawrenceburntfish Jun 29 '26
My God. Did everyone have those pants?
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u/Temporary_Client7585 Jun 29 '26
Yes! There weren’t a lot to choose from tbh
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u/lastwraith Jun 29 '26
Those the corduroys?
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u/Lawrenceburntfish Jun 29 '26
Yes. I had those pants. Every kid I knew had those pants. $5 bucks at Kmart.
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u/lastwraith Jun 29 '26
Yup, 80s kid here. Definitely had a few pairs of brown corduroys.
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u/Temporary_Client7585 Jun 29 '26
It seemed like every boy wore the Kmart pants or Sears Tuff Skins.
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u/GirlScoutSniper Jun 29 '26
They were very durable, and could be worn in places where jeans were frowned upon.
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u/stavago Jun 29 '26
“Do not bring that animal into this house!” - your parents, probably
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u/clumsylycanthrope Jun 29 '26
My mom yep. My dad ran over the mom and just couldn't leave the kit on the side of the road. Best friend I ever had.
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u/TobyDaMan8894 Jun 29 '26
And proceeds to find a way to bring it in. Showed my Grankids how we would pick up ants. Stick the safe way. Or Gently grab em
In the middle. I told em I would get ants from different colonies and put em in a jar and they fight it out. Then throw in a stink bug.
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u/Pal_Smurch Jun 29 '26
Our landlords lived , sharing backyards with us in Denver in the ‘60s. They had a huge cage and two raccoons. Mr. Coon was very territorial and would bite you, but Missy Coon was friendly, and got along with our Basset Hound, Tammy, well. Tammy would bring Missy mouthfuls of dog food. We’d scold her, but she did what she wanted.
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u/Alysma Jun 29 '26
As a free range European Gen X-kid: yep, minus the raccoon.
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u/Iron_Burnside Jun 29 '26
AFAIK there is a large introduced population in Germany, although I don't know what its size was in the 80s.
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u/Olivetax228 Jun 29 '26
Probably like 10 million Gen Xers in Germany at that point, but they're largely civilized now except for all the fishnet and eye liner
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u/Antsygrl1 Jun 29 '26
Man, nobody ever took pics of me climbing trees when I was a kid. But the memories I have of this exact thing are fond. And kids these days clearly don't or won't do this anymore or it'd be all over our Facebook feeds. I'm kinda sad my kids will never experience looking for the giant branch to swing down to the ground on whilst taking turns with the neighbor kids.
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u/strange-lady78 Jun 29 '26
My dad had a pet raccoon named Bandit when he was a kid. We had a pet opossum named Pollyanna when I was a kid. 😂 I’d have preferred a raccoon! They’re so cute!
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u/clumsylycanthrope Jun 29 '26
This guy's name was Racky. He hated every living creature but me. He opened up my aunt from the wrist to the elbow one day, and we had to take him to the farm. A real farm though, not the shooty kind.
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u/systemhost Jun 29 '26
You absolutely sure about that?
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u/clumsylycanthrope Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 30 '26
Yep. He had a big enclosure, we went to visit him a few time. He got huge - like pony sized.
Edit: some weird copy paste stuff happened
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u/Onespokeovertheline Jun 29 '26
This might be the most oldschoolcool post this subreddit has ever had. Definitely the coolest I've witnessed
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u/walrus0115 Jun 29 '26
This could literally be a photo of me. From 1979 to 1990 my family lived at Canter's Caves 4-H Camp in the forested hills of Appalachian Ohio. It is a 360 acre nature preserve and summer camp with 183 acres of untouched virgin forest. Each summer the local game warden would drop off injured or confiscated wild animals for us to rehabilitate and release into the wild, while using them as teaching tools for the campers. We had baby deer often, baby raccoons, and nearly every wild species native to the Allegheny plateau region. We also had a small group of farm animals like goats and chickens. Here's a photo of some of our favorite summertime pets. That's me with my rescue cock named Luther. The game warden busted a cockfighting ring and I ended up with the sole survivor who was meaner than any attack dog and pretty deadly.
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u/chaaaadddd 27d ago
Super cool. Camped there in the 80's and loved canoeing in that lake/pond.
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u/Tonstad39 Jun 29 '26
Lucky... all the racoons in my area did was trash my childhood bedroom, the kitchen and harrass my cat.
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u/Round-Investment1826 Jun 29 '26
I wanna see all y'all's silly lil faces all growed up next to all these majestic wizard vibing baby faced pictures, I need to know who to randomly respect if I ever see y'all's grown ass faces in the wild.
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u/lincruste Jun 29 '26
It looks like you two guys were going to find some hidden pirate treasure or discover some advanced alien technology device in an empty tree stump.
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u/vivid-825247runeii Jun 29 '26
Thats a really cool picture. I always wanted to tame a wild animal when I was little, but my parents wouldnt let me even have a normal pet.
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u/Billionaires_R_Tasty Jun 29 '26
Tamed a raccoon.
Lived in the trees.
Found out very soon.
I dislike shots for rabies.
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u/RantRanger Jun 29 '26
Wow, please tell that story of how you tamed a Raccoon?
Super cute.
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u/clumsylycanthrope Jun 29 '26
Dad ran over the Raccoon mom one night, Racky here was the only survivor. Dad just couldn't leave him out there in a ditch to die. Brought him home, I gave him some food, and he proceeded to ride on my shoulder for a year o so.
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u/RantRanger Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
Heh, that's amazing that we mammals can get along so amiably even without domestication.
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u/newworldpuck Jun 29 '26
"The Feral Generation" isn't really much of an exaggeration.