I was 13 and had just started at a new school. I knew no one and had no friends yet. So few friends, in fact, that when I got told my mum would be late picking me up, I decided to wait for her in the library and get a head start on my homework.
I walked into the library to find it was pretty full of much older kids, but I saw a seat over the other side of the room. Walked across, being stared at by the scary older students, but I did my best to be nonchalant, show ’em the new boy wasn’t to be intimidated.
Get to the empty place, pull back the heavy wooden chair with a loud squeak and drop my bag on the table, at which point the boy in the chair next to me leaned over and whispered “This is an exam.”
Picked up my bag and walked back across room red faced, no longer nonchalant, and pursued by muffled laughter. Regrettably, it solved the problem of no one knowing who I was.
And what did you do in middle school/junior high that makes you cringe even today?
My friends and i pretended we were shapes-hifting dragons and would refer to our classmates as “mortals”
…. sigh.
I fabricated a girlfriend so a girl I liked at the time would be jealous. I even showed off a new watch and told her it was my Christmas present from my girlfriend (my mom bought it). I guess my master plan was to “dump” the fake girl if the girl I actually liked expressed an interest in me? Who the hell knows.
The worst part of the lie was that I named my fake girlfriend Candy. Because that’s obviously a name of a real person who I dated, who was not at all fake. Ugh. I hate remembering teenage me.
Sent an email to three girls I was interested in during the summer. The email said something along the lines of, “I like you, I would like you to be my girlfriend for the upcoming school year. If you are interested, please let me know, if not could you send this to girl B and girl C” I requested that because I could not confirm if I had the proper emails for any of the girls. I seriously had the most cringeworthy childhood, this is just a bump in the road
I pretended to be a dog in gym class. I got down on all fours and barked at my class mates. This was in 8th grade.
I’ve told this story before, but the cringe is too great to only share once.
This was 1996, 6th grade, my best friend & I were obsessed with SNL. I had a tape recorded off of TV from like 1989 which was an SNL anniversary special, and had montages of skits from past years. There was one in particular that we liked the best, it was the “Festrunk Brothers”, which was Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin as these 70’s swinger types, who wore garish clothing and spoke in broken english with a Czech accent. They’d do these little dance moves when they walked, and always tried to “pick up chicks”, unsuccessfully.
For some reason unknown to man, we thought these guys were the best, so funny, the little walks they did, the clothes they wore, and the accents. Funny, I guess. So we really liked these guys, and decided that we were going to be like them. My friend “got” to be Steve Martin and I was Dan Akroyd. My friend’s mom bought us ugly 70’s hats that looked just like theirs, and we’d go around home, school, the park, whereever, and do this routine. “We are two Czech brothers, cruising and swinging!”
We were ruthlessly mocked by our peers, and our parents and teachers and other adults, would smile and look at us with barely disguised pity. We thought everyone thought we were hilarious, only until it started adding up that we realized we looked like ultradorks and slowly shamed out of it.
I also have to add we are girls. And straight. We thought boys would think we were funny. 2 straight 6th grade girls that wanted to be a couple of 70’s Czech swingers trying to pick up chicks. Makes sense. God the fucking cringe.
I had a spiked up Mohawk that would bend down halfway through the day
Girlfriend at the time rode the bus home. I got picked up by my mom, so I made it home before she did. Her bus route took her by the road in front of my neighborhood. My neighborhood had a big stone sign at the entrance with the neighborhoods name on it. I used to get home from school, then run down to the sign so that I could stand on top of it and wave to her as the bus drove by, every single day.
Good lord I hope my mother never told my dad about that one.
Oh my god, I have so many.
Any guy I had a crush on, I would “accidentally” send a message to on MSN messenger to break the ice. The guys this did work on were just as pathetic as I was.
Shaved my unibrow/ eyebrows to shape them because I had no idea there was any other way and I was too embarrassed to ask.
Wore one of those clip key ring things around one of the front loops of my pants to show off all those dollar machine key chain accessory things you could get at Wal Mart and my house key.
My family was too poor to buy me the trendy shoes that all the other kids wore, so I walked around in socks and told people that I just liked being shoeless better.