This is the time of year to make memories. Fall sports are just ending and winter sports are just beginning. Holidays and events such as homecoming, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are upon us or approaching fast.

This is the time that teens can make their best, worst or funniest memories. Adults and parents, however, have lived through countless seasons like this, have their fair share of tales to tell, and all of the holiday spirit seems to encourage them to spin these yarns to any and all who will listen.

Teens, there's no need to scoff at these "adventure" stories, as you will be in the same position in the not-too-distant future. It's a great opportunity to connect with your parents and relatives and get a little interesting peek into what makes 'em tick. So take interest and pay attention, even as you begin to form your future stories through these holidays.

Here are a few ancient tales of adventure from adult friends and relatives I dug up to start you off...

Ron
"My freshmen year at Germantown, my friends and I loved to play basketball. Well, we thought it would be a great idea to play night games outside of the school. In order to accomplish this, we needed enough light to play. So a couple of my older friends built this light contraption. To use them, someone had to climb to the top of the school, remove the schools light bulb, and plug in and set up our lights to shine down onto the courts. It worked and we had many great nights, playing 'under the lights.'

Then, one night, the cops showed up in the middle of one of these games. They got out of their cars, and asked, 'Who did this?' Thinking that they would find our setup innovative, we told them that we had done this. They, however, did not see it the way we thought they would. They started talking about violations of curfew, trespassing on school property, and other things. Then they told us to take it down, get out of there, and not to do it again. That's all that happened to me, but I was one of the younger kids. The older kids may have been disciplined more. That's was one of my best teen years memories."

Mike
"My senior year, two of my friends and I wanted to pull a senior prank. Our school, Oak Creek, had a nasty, old librarian who hated kids and made the library a horrible place. We decided that we would use our prank to get back at her. Looking at the school schedules, we found that there was a period of time between late on Saturday and Monday, in which no one would be in the school. One weekend during that period, we snuck onto the school premises, and got into the library. We took the books off the shelves and moved them into the hallways. We also mixed them all around, in the library and in the halls. Then we left and waited for school on Monday.

When we got there, everyone was laughing at the hundreds of books in all of the hallways, and the librarian was flipping out. As in all libraries, all the books are sorted carefully in a particular way, so the library was closed for a week, while the librarian resorted all of the books. The thing that made this a good and fun prank is that nobody was injured, we didn't break anything or damage anything and we had a small group, so nobody knew who did it and we didn't spread what we did around. The funniest part, by the way, is that the two guys that were with me and helped do this prank, both became policemen and still are!"

Paul
"On Halloween in 1969, me and the rest of the "Iowa Avenue Gang," as we liked to call ourselves, had nothing to do and we were too ugly to get dates. So, the eight of us decided to a pull a prank in our neighborhood. There was this one girl we knew named Linda who lived on our street, and their family had a boat, a 12-foot aluminum one. Well, we decided it would be really funny to put that boat in the big pool that they had. So we all went into "stealth mode" and crept through the neighborhood to Linda's house. We got the boat into the pool, and one of the guys got in the boat.

Just then, the lights went on. All of us dove, ran, and leapt for cover. My brother fell into a thorn bush, but kept silent because he didn't want to get caught. I dove under some bushes and crawled through some dog poop to get away. Linda's dad came out, saw the boat in the pool, and knew that we were all out there. He kept yelling for us to come out, and one by one we did. All of us did, except for Artie, the one in the boat. Linda's dad thought it was actually pretty funny, and expected this kind of thing from us. Then Artie, hearing the laughter, poked his head out, and got yelled at because he didn't come out right away and because he never got in trouble.

We didn't get in any trouble, but we had to take the boat out of the pool. The water was absolutely freezing because it was October, and I smelled like dog poop. It was a great time though."