The Dumbest Thing I Ever Did at Fifteen

In 1963, a new bridge across Tampa Bay became a proving ground for teenage boys. Before smartphones, social media, and helicopter parenting, peer pressure could still convince a fifteen-year-old to do something spectacularly stupid.

Part of The American Time Capsule — preserving the people, places, traditions, rites of passage, and everyday moments that shaped growing up in America before the digital age.

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Every Group of Boys Had a Test

There are certain things you do as a teenager that make absolutely no sense when you look back on them sixty years later.

This was one of mine.

It was the summer of 1963.

I was fifteen years old, living in the Tampa Bay area, and trying to earn my place among a group of local boys.

Like teenage boys everywhere, we had our own unwritten rules.

Nobody formally announced them.

Nobody handed you an application.

But if you wanted to be accepted as one of the guys, sooner or later somebody was going to challenge you to prove you belonged.

Usually that meant doing something stupid.

In my case…

It meant jumping off the Howard Frankland Bridge.

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The New Bridge Across Tampa Bay

The Howard Frankland Bridge was still practically new.

It had opened only a few years earlier, carrying traffic across Tampa Bay between Tampa and St. Petersburg.

To adults, it was an impressive new piece of Florida infrastructure.

To a bunch of fifteen-year-old boys with more testosterone than common sense…

It was a diving platform.

We had access to a small boat, and the procedure was apparently already well established among the guys who had done it before.

We headed out into Tampa Bay toward the high portion of the bridge over the shipping channel.

The closer we got, the larger that bridge became.

From a car, a bridge doesn’t seem particularly intimidating.

You’re across it in a few minutes.

From a small boat sitting beside one of those enormous concrete supports…

It looks considerably different.

We cut the engine and maneuvered alongside one of the pilings.

Above us, cars rushed across the bridge.

Below us was the dark water of Tampa Bay.

And somewhere between the two was where I was expected to prove that I belonged.

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Nobody Wants to Be the Coward

I don’t remember exactly what the other boys said to me.

They probably didn’t have to say much.

At fifteen, sometimes a look is enough.

You going or not?

That’s the thing about peer pressure.

Nobody necessarily has to force you.

You do most of the work yourself.

I wanted these guys to accept me.

I didn’t want to be the kid who climbed halfway up and came back down.

I certainly didn’t want to sit in the boat while everybody else laughed about the guy who was afraid to jump.

So I started climbing.

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It Looked Higher From Up There

There was a narrow, steel, maintenance ladder attached to the bridge structure.

I grabbed hold and began climbing.

With every rung, the boat became smaller.

The water became farther away.

And my brilliant idea became considerably less brilliant.

Eventually I reached a small maintenance platform beneath the roadway.

As I remember it, the thing wasn’t much more than about three feet by three feet.

Just enough room to stand there and reconsider every decision that had brought me to that moment.

Cars were roaring past only a short distance above my head.

The entire bridge seemed to vibrate.

Then I looked down.

That was a mistake.

The water that had looked inviting from the boat now looked dark and very far away.

Every once in a while, you could see a large shape moving beneath the surface.

Fish?

Probably.

Something else?

This was Florida.

Were there sharks down there?

Who knew?

I certainly didn’t.

And standing on that tiny platform wasn’t the ideal time to start wondering.

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There Was One Problem

I had already climbed up.

The guys were below.

They were watching.

And I had spent whatever teenage credibility I’d accumulated getting myself onto that platform.

There really wasn’t any graceful way to announce:

“I’ve reconsidered.”

I wish I could tell you I stood there calmly contemplating the physics of the jump.

I didn’t.

I was scared.

But there’s a peculiar difference between being frightened when you’re alone and being frightened when you’re fifteen years old and your friends are watching.

So I did what millions of teenage boys have done before and since.

I allowed stupidity to overpower fear.

I jumped.

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That’s a Long Way Down

For a moment there was nothing beneath my feet.

The traffic disappeared.

The voices disappeared.

Everything seemed strangely quiet.

Then gravity reminded me that we’d entered into an agreement.

I was going down whether I liked it or not.

My arms started windmilling as I tried desperately to keep myself upright.

Whatever style I might have imagined displaying disappeared immediately.

This wasn’t Olympic diving.

This was survival.

The water rushed toward me.

Then—

WHAM.

I hit feet first.

At that speed, water doesn’t feel particularly soft.

The impact slapped the bottoms of my feet and drove me beneath the surface.

Down I went into the dark water.

For a brief moment, there was only greenish darkness, bubbles, and one overriding thought:

Get back to the surface.

Then I came bursting up, gasping for air.

I was alive.

Nothing appeared to be broken.

No shark had eaten me.

And somewhere during the impact, Tampa Bay had attempted to remove my swimming trunks.

I pulled them back into position before my triumphant moment became memorable for an entirely different reason.

Then I looked up.

Way up.

At that little platform beneath the bridge.

I had actually done it.

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Once Was Enough

The other guys had done it.

Now I had done it.

Whatever initiation requirement existed for membership in the Tampa Bay Boys Club…

I had apparently passed.

And I never did it again.

That may have been the smartest decision I made all day.

Looking back at some of the risks we took as kids—and the remarkably small amount of adult supervision involved—it’s a wonder so many of us survived those years intact, something I explore in How Did We Ever Make It to Adulthood?

There was no need.

I had already proved whatever fifteen-year-old boys thought needed proving.

Besides, once you’ve jumped off a bridge into dark water while wondering whether the shadows beneath you might have teeth…

Doing it a second time doesn’t prove you’re braver.

It may only prove you didn’t learn anything the first time.

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We Got Away With Things You Couldn’t Do Today

Looking back, another thing strikes me.

I can’t imagine a bunch of fifteen-year-olds getting away with something like that today.

Our parents gave us a degree of freedom that would surprise many families today, and most of the time they had only a vague idea where we actually were—a childhood world I remember in Come Home When the Streetlights Come On.

Security around major bridges is different.

Surveillance is different.

Law enforcement is different.

And after September 11, access to critical infrastructure became an entirely different matter.

Back then, however, we had a little boat, an enormous bridge, and apparently nobody paying enough attention to stop us from doing something monumentally stupid.

That’s probably fortunate.

And unfortunate.

At the same time.

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Peer Pressure Didn’t Begin With Social Media

We talk a lot today about the pressures young people face online.

They’re real.

But peer pressure certainly wasn’t invented by smartphones.

We had our own version.

Ours usually happened face-to-face.

The same neighborhood culture that taught us how to organize our own games, settle arguments, compete, and make friends also created its own pecking order, something I remember in The Games That Raised a Generation

Somebody dared you.

Somebody questioned whether you had the nerve.

Everybody watched.

And suddenly a terrible idea became a test of courage.

At fifteen, the difference between:

“That’s dangerous.”

and

“They’re going to think I’m chicken.”

could become surprisingly difficult to recognize.

I wasn’t trying to die that day.

I wasn’t even trying to be reckless.

I was trying to belong.

There’s an important difference.

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Courage and Stupidity Sometimes Look Alike at Fifteen

For years afterward, I probably remembered that jump as something courageous.

I had been afraid.

I jumped anyway.

Isn’t that courage?

Maybe.

But age has a way of changing the verdict.

Today, I look back at that fifteen-year-old standing on a tiny maintenance platform high above Tampa Bay and want to ask him a simple question:

Richard, what in the hell were you thinking?

I already know the answer.

I wasn’t.

I was fifteen.

My friends were watching.

And sometimes that was all it took.

Still…

I remember climbing that ladder.

I remember the cars roaring above me.

I remember standing on that tiny platform.

I remember looking down into the dark water and seeing those mysterious shapes moving below.

I remember being scared.

And I remember jumping anyway.

The Part I Never Told Mom

There was one person who knew absolutely nothing about my Howard Frankland Bridge adventure.

My mother.

I certainly wasn’t dumb enough to go home and tell her what I’d done.

Jumping off the bridge may have demonstrated questionable judgment.

Telling Mom about it immediately afterward would have confirmed it.

Mom had patched up plenty of the injuries and illnesses that came with raising kids, as I remember in Mom Was the Family Doctor, but this was one adventure I decided was better left out of her medical records.

She probably would have had me committed.

So I kept that particular adventure to myself.

It wasn’t until many years later, when we were reminiscing about the time our family spent in Tampa, that I finally told her.

At first, she didn’t believe me.

I think she found it impossible to accept that the son she’d raised could possibly have been that stupid.

Then my sisters joined the conversation.

They knew exactly what I was talking about.

In fact, they had a confession of their own.

They had been in the boat that took us out to the bridge.

That pretty much destroyed my last chance of claiming I’d made the whole thing up.

Mom just shook her head.

I think there was probably some relief mixed with disbelief as she realized that the incident had happened decades earlier and that, whatever else could be said about her idiot son, he had at least survived it.

Then she said she was glad I hadn’t told her at the time.

But after a moment, she gave me that look.

Every kid knows the one.

The Mom Look.

The expression that says a question is coming and you’d better think very carefully about your answer.

Then she wanted to know:

“So, Richard… what other dumb things did you do as a kid that would have put gray in my hair?”

Well, Mom…

How much time do you have?

More than sixty years later, I’m not particularly proud that I did it.

I’m simply grateful I survived long enough to understand how dumb it was.

Because one of the great privileges of getting old is being able to look back at the stupid things you did when you were young and say:

“Well… apparently I survived that one too.”

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Bunker Rule

Courage means doing something despite being afraid. Stupidity sometimes does too. The trick is surviving long enough to learn the difference.

Bunker Notice

This article recounts a reckless teenage experience from 1963 and is presented as personal history—not as something to imitate. Jumping from bridges, entering restricted infrastructure, or diving into unfamiliar water can result in serious injury or death and may violate the law. I did it once as a fifteen-year-old trying to prove himself. More than sixty years later, I’m grateful I survived it.