stupid fucking things you did as a teenager...

[Hairglitter]

Not as in sex/drugs/alcohol or whatever but just general ridiculousness. I used to:

• leave my straighteners ON every morning so they'd be on ALL DAY just so when I came in from school they would be hot enough to re-straighten my hair immediately. God forbid I go twenty seconds with unstraightened hair. When I think of the fire risk!!!!

• Refuse to wear my coat even in 3 degree weather because it wasn't cool to wear your coat

• Carry my PE kit to school in a JD sports bag because that was the done thing, despite having a perfectly good rucksack

• At one point, teeny tiny little Nike "just do it" backpacks were in but they weren't big enough to fit any of your stuff in. So I used to carry on e about (which just held my pencil case and my keys) and carry all my books seperately in my arms

I can't wait til my son is that age and starts doing equally daft things.

Omg how long you got?????
Hang around with men nearly twice my age when I was 12/13
Got very drunk (many times) and either got taken to hospital or rescued by parents
Had sex to early
Wore awful clothes
Dyed my fringe red and the rest blonde
Wear black eyeliner as lip liner and concealer on lips ( I didn't do this but friends did)
Worn heather shimmer lipstick

Had a pair of men's boat shoes in a lovely shade of brown, two sizes too big, wore them with laces undone and two pairs of rolled up socks rolled up inside them!

Washed my hair every morning before school and then messed up again using a ton of hairspray ( got through a can a week) and gel to style it right. Left straoghtners on all day.
This was while preaching on to my parents and wider family about the ozone layer and saving the planet.

Would only use certain branded carrier bags to take PE kit and cooking stuff to school in.

Nicked my Dad's pringle socks and would only wear those with addidas (I think) trainers with big tounge sticking up.

Would never wear a coat only my Dad's golf jumper instead of regulation school one.

Dyed my hair plum during break time at school once. Head of year and my mum went mental.

Brought a pair of levi 501s that were expensive. Got them home and slashed them to pieces for ripped jeans.

I live in NE Scotland and we have very close links with Scandinavia.

Helly Hansen jackets are still very prized as they are Scandinavian made for fishermen against the wind cold and rain.

My 15 year old Dd has a Helly Hansen jacket. She would rather freeze than wear it but if she did it would be as cool as you can be if you have to war a coat which still signals Social death

Settled down with the big I met at 14, got a house together and decided that was it for the rest of my life

There was a change of plan at 20.

Boy. Not big.

Bit of a sad one but in the early 90s there was a Lloyd's tv ad and they made their phone number into a fairy tale :

Oh, a tundred
Sever one, oh
Sever two, free!

Me and my friends would go to the pay phone at lunchtime and phone the number and just chat to the people on the other end. Most of them were quite polite but there was one guy who was a bit needy and begged us to call him back the next day and ask for him. We gave up after that.

Good advertising though as I clearly still remember the number!

And river island bags were the best!

Wearing those sweat bands on the wrists in various different colours from the likes of Tammy Girl and Claire's.

Believing your relationships to be totally serious at 13. I think this makes me cringe the most, actually. I don't think I ever thought they were lifelong relationships but we would behave like we were really grown up and a serious couple.

Being on holiday aged 13 and getting a fake tattoo. It was a massive tribal pattern that my poor mum had to apply to my lower back, a proper "tramp stamp". Picturing myself strutting about thinking I had a tattoo is just a horrific memory. I also made my mum promise to let me get the exact tattoo when I was 16. Thank god I didn't.

I have a really plain and boring name and used to beg my mum to let me change it (I'm noticing a theme emerging here, my poor mum). I wanted to change it to Tanya or Mercedes because I thought it would make me sound like a celebrity.

Creating nicknames for myself that nobody ever called me. I would change nicknames hoping one would catch on but it never did.

Used to write to agony aunts in teen magazines with fake stories just for a laugh and something to do.

I am certain there are loads more!!

We used to make prank calls, but really lame ones

We used to call the walkers hotline printed on the back of the packets and then when they answered say things like “WILL YOU BE BRINGING OUT MULTIPACKS OF SEVEN BAGS??? HA HA HA HA!!!” and hang up the phone.

What tricksters.

I was pranked my DH sister saying her cat had been run over, it was sat next to her I was an awful teenager!

That's made my night reading this

Black eyeliner everywhere
Eyes, eyebrows, lipliner, fake "Madonna" mole (not allowed the peircing), fake tattoos, whatever

Writing "love" and "hate" on my knuckles with biro (or sometimes other 4 letter words that caught my fancy)

Putting my playboy phone case on the Nokia phone once I was out. The only person who ever called was my Mum, and the only person who texted was the friend sat next to me, because obviously it was easier to decipher a bunch of random letters and hide the vibrate sound than just whisper. Which was all a front anyway, for carrying around a gaming device all day. Snake 2. Nothing has ever beaten it.

• Those massive wide jeans that got drenched up to the crotch in rain

• Gems, so many gems in the corners of my eyes

• Attempted to drive a moped (I was about 6 stone wet through) and proper fucked up my leg when I couldn’t and I slow mo tipped side ways and it landed on top of me

• My Dads kitchen was a flat roof extension, I used to climb out of my bedroom window and sit on it constantly

• Sat on the roof at my Grandads, climbed out the attic window all the time

• Fucking roller blading on skate parks, worse than Bambi on ice

Ooooh, oooh! I used to stick fake crystals to my outer lower eyelashes with eyelash glue. Either one on each side or three... can't be sure which.

Kind of want to try that again.

• Rang catalogue companies from a pay phone and sent them to a girls house that was bullying me Not sure what I thought that would accomplish...

• Was always on The Padded Cell chatroom on TeenChat

• Roleplayed wrestling online?! Loads of HTML and complex story lines

• Wrote Harry Potter FanFiction. Badly. I was obsessed with Sirius Black. It’s still online now, DBro reads it twice a year

• Had several diaries, most of which were filled with maladaptive daydream stuff

Love this thread!
-i swan in the local reservoir (grim!)

-the jane norman hype!!! I had a jane norman bag for my books etc & the carrier bag for my p.e kit

-spending dinner money on packets of cigs, then selling them for 50p a cig

-wrapping a scarf around my head and walking out of school gates so teachers couldn’t do a description if i was seen- it worked never got caught in all my years at high school ‘wagging it’

-pulled the thread out of my school tie apparently it meant it had been ‘christened’

I spent so many years wishing to be older and independent. But my god what i would do to be on the 6 week school holidays not having a single care in the world. Rather be doing that then running a business and paying bills!

Blue mascara

Kappa poppa pants

Fringe blow dried and back combed to magnificent height

Lightening my own hair with sun-in mixed with fresh lemon juice

Schott jackets

Telling my parents I was staying at my mates house but really going to raves hundreds of miles away with 2 lads who were at least 10 years older than me, getting off our faces on amphetamines and then one of them driving us home

Oh god love this thread
Wearing clunky buffaloes
Dresses over trousers
Walking home drunk from nightclubs at 3am by myself too many times to mention but thinking I would be safe if I walked in the middle of road with shoes off so I could run and pretending to be the hunchback of notre dame
Going in any car round the M25 to find a phone box telling us where an illegal rave was
My poor parents and my daughter is now 17 and I can see it lives on

A few incidents with Sun-in and some highly ill-advised hair glitter!

And....being very sad and serious when I should have tried to have fun and taken a few chances whilst adolescent behaviour was still actually age-appropriate (I’ve learned it’s frowned on in your 40s).

Wore rubbish brands like Joe Bloggs, Kappa and Naf Naf

@louisvootin yes! I had a skirt over trousers thing!

I used sun-in. Dear God.

Also, I had a t-shirt that said "every day of my life, I'm forced to add another name to the list of people who piss me off". I bought it on holiday in Turkey when I was 11! And my parents let me wear it (although DM described it as "terribly uncouth")

Pierced my own ears, cut my own hair, sun in, and didn't eat my packed lunch sandwiches!

I've found my people!

I drank Malibu thinking it was 5% alcohol like a Bacardi breezer, I was necking it in a wine glass straight all night, ended up in hospital on a drip 😱

Whoever it was who said platform shoes , jeans and bodysuits for the benefit of the guy on the waltzers. Are you me?

Those hyper colour tops that changes colour when you were hot 🤦‍♀️

Dyed my hair jet black and got and very short bob and fringe cut in. Wanted to be a cross between Betty Blue and Corrine from Swing Out Sister.
I looked like Blackadder.

I admit I still do a dress over trousers combo’ from time to time - only way to survive the heat!

Too many to count. Too my absolute horror, a few weeks ago, a friend sent me a you tube link (don't know how she found it) to an old Pathe News film, Swinging London 1967, or similar. Still instantly recognisable after all this time. Fortunately, my appearance was brief and unembarassing but it could have been so much worse. Shudder. 52 years ago! so beware all those facebook/Instagram thingies, who knows what lies ahead.