Talking about his childhood in Detroit, Carson told the crowd about the trouble he’d make with friends, “throwing rocks at cars,” which he joked “everybody did … because it was so much fun.” With a good-natured smile, he described how the drivers would chase him “and we would run slowly to encourage them — and just when they were nearby, we were gone like a flash.”

When cops came, “always in unmarked cars, they’d be chasing us across the field and they would think they trapped us” at 10-feet-tall fences, Carson said. 

But the cops “had no idea how adept we were at getting over those fences,” Carson joked with a smile, describing how he and his friends would leap over the fences in a single bound “and laugh at them because they couldn’t do that.”

“That was back in the day before they would shoot you,” Carson added, pausing for a beat before chuckling heartily and adding, “I’m just kidding, you know they wouldn’t do that.”