I lived in Poland when I was about 10-13 yrs old. During my time there:
Smoked up to a pack a day at one point, pretty much every kid there smoked, often starting at a very young age. To me it was fun, I could blow circles and whatnot.
Dragged scrap metal across town with a fellow grimy friend to one of those places that bought it per pound, would jack stuff from construction sites. Only did this a couple times, I remember one day after a whole lot of metal hauling with some solid copper and steel scores I had enough to buy a big jug of juice. It was pretty lol, but I haven't felt as satisfied from actually "earning" something since.
Everyone there collected telephone cards
There were a TON of different kinds printed in different years, varying in rarity. It was seriously a huge thing. A good way of getting them would be rigging a telephone machine so that it wouldn't spit the card back out. Those pointer lasers and decent-powered pellet guns were also quite popular. One time I was shining my laser into someones apartment and the reflection from their window caused a really strong red projection in their room. It wasn't until later that I realized thats why the cops had come, although they didn't know where the light had been shining from. Obv it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what people did with the pellet guns.
You could pick up any of the previously mentioned goods at a Polish bazaar, which if you are ever in Poland you should really go check out (the big ones only run on Sundays), as they are quite a sight and you can get some really neat stuff (antiques of all kinds, rare random items, etc). You could buy pirated games, music, and anything else very cheap. They also had some hilarious fake clothing apparel ("abibas" with 4 stripes, "Mike" with the swoosh inverted, and many many other varieties)
Fireworks for new years were pretty fun over there. I bought a stick the size of dynamite with a match-type ignition on one of the bazaars. It shook the entire block hard when we set it off. Roman candles were shot off into people's windows, things were blown up, yadda yadda.
Skipped class a LOT, with or without friends, often to go chill at an internet cafe. There were several of these in Wroclaw, where I lived. You could play for an hour for the equiv of $1.5 and they served food so you could just chill there all day if you wanted. Id often just watch as I didn't have any money on me, but it was way better than class. Barely passed physics, although some of the classes there were on par with high school and even some college classes here.
One little "mini" playground with a tire swing and a bench or two was behind my friend's apartment building. He lit some paper and put it in the tire. We (was a couple of us there) peaced out. The little playground thing had burned down and police were knocking on my friend's door that same day. He didn't answer, and they went away. I assume someone had witnessed him there, but cops had better things to do than care. It wasn't really that much damage, just a burnt down tire swing, but tires do make a lot of black smoke.
Had run ins with all kinds of people, including one drunk bum that told me Jesus was a communist, and all the red in the churches was proof. I had to go to church (pretty much everyone was Catholic) most Sundays personally, which was a pretty big buzzkill and I felt it kinda ruined my day. My uncle is a priest over there in one of the towns and runs a place that looks like the Taj Mahal, walkway and everything. I havent kept in touch with him, even though he was/is a good guy. I'm far from religious at this point as well.
I was pretty cruel to animals for a while when I got back to the states as the kids there were pretty brutal to the stray animals, but thankfully that faded away fast, and I'd say I'm as good as they get towards pets. I wouldn't even mind working at a shelter. I'm just amazed at the kind of behavior I was capable of shortly after getting out of that jungle. Thats what poverty can do to people, I know better than to judge at this point (even though I was never really poor, and the grimy things I did such as dragging metal was mainly for my own amusement, although some of the kids I knew got their bread and clothing for free from the churches and whatnot).
I promise you I'm not crazy or a sociopath, and anyone that has met me can attest to that, but I thought these stories were amusing enough to share. I was just a dumb kid over in Wroclaw, and this is just how it went down.