Things you used to do that now make you cringe!

[lifestooshorttodickaboutwithaubergines]

So I’ve been seeing the odd Facebook memory, throwing up past status updates I posted that now give me extreme second-hand embarrassment. We’re talking maybe ten or so years ago.

It got me thinking about how when I first learnt to drive, at about 19, I had a car but didn’t use it to get to work. My part-time job whilst at uni was in the town centre and it didn’t make financial sense to drive due to parking costs and that, so I would get the bus instead. For some unknown reason I felt a bit embarrassed about this, so when on the bus I used to keep my car keys in my hand so they’d be visible to the other passengers. Just so they’d know I could actually drive, y’know 🙄

I cringe when I think back to this! I’m sure nobody even noticed, because why would they, but I get that hot feeling of embarrassment whenever I recall it 😳

Anyone else look back at things you used to do and think wtf was I thinking?!

Such a good thread, utterly relieved to see I'm not the only silly twat in existence 🤣

There appears to be many of us! Silly twats assemble 😂 I’ve realised with horror that there are many more scenarios I could add, my whole life seems to have been one giant cringe 😬

I once sent myself flowers to work from a secret admirer 😳.

Nobody particularly cared.

Then once, I actually received some flowers from a secret admirer and it totally freaked me out!

I was an absolute idiot when I was a teen and liked anyone.

I fancied a guy at work when I was 18 and he liked Metallica, and we were allowed to wear headphones and listen to music.

So I put music he liked on my mix cd on my cd player (god I sound old) and played it so loud everyone could hear it so he would notice I was listening to it.

Another guy I liked when I was 18 I met in a metal club which I randomly went to once with my friend, we dated for a bit and then he dumped me and he was actually awful to me and cheated. But I stupidly continued to be friends with him and to try and impress him I would go to the metal club and mosh and would headbang to metal music in front of everyone. Now I was the type of person who would listen to kaiser chiefs and wear floral flowy skirts and drinks cocktails. No we never got back together. Embarrassing.

It just makes me cringe so hard.

Yes I agree on Facebook posts!! Even in early 30s posting all these cryptic Facebook posts , blatantly me feeling shit about people and then trying to be cryptic on Facebook. I even posted made up conversations with my then two year old!

As sixth formers, my friends and I used to spend evenings at the local airport, for no apparent reason. I often used to go dressed in what I thought celebrities would wear (channelled Liz Hurley a lot!), dark glasses and all, hoping people would think I was famous, or a model or something.

Wearing dark glasses indoors was a thing of mine. My best moment was when my then boyfriend and I were mistaken for Liz Hurley and Hugh Grant in a pub once.

Also at 6th form, took to carrying a brief case around with my books and papers in, the kind a businessman in the 80’s would have. It used to belong to my stepdad, who was an HR Director.
Dressed like i was about 50 or 60 when i was 16 - designer power suits with massive shoulder pads, etc

Many more cringey things, that I’ve tried to block out…

This is all making my current teenager’s behaviour look incredibly normal 😀

Oh I did this but with a stretched out paper clip (it cut my gums) and because I thought people might realise it was a fake brace I decided to tell them all I’d had a lung transplant at the weekend as well 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ no idea why probably to throw them off the scent of my fake brace 😆

Thought of another one.
I used to get the 25 bus from Stratford to St Bart’s hospital for work, the journey was over an hour long. I’d just got my first mobile phone (they were a newish thing back in 1997/1998) and rather than use the time producivly, I used to have fake conversations on the phone. Even cringier is I sometimes did them in a made up language to make myself more interesting to everyone else on the bus.

I also pretended I had ice skating lessons . It was all fine till someone had a skating party and my parents made me go. Everyone was expecting to see my ‘grade 8 skating jumps’ (not sure there is a grade 8 or even grades in Ice skating) 😂

pretty much, where's the flight of the navigator craft to take me back in time or a parallel universe to try again

I remember a girl at school
making odd sex noises on a bus pretending to be asleep…. Now wondering if it was you 😱

I think I did all of these things - the fake boyfriends, the snogging of posters, the stalking of innocent boys!!!!!
The worst for me (apart from some of the men I was with) was shaving my eyebrows off & pretending I hadn't. Would go into school on a Mon with no brows & deny deny deny.....

Ahahaha! Same! That's the first thing that popped into my head when I read the title. I never knew where to put my cigarette holder when not in use because it stank and it made my pockets reek. 😆

When all the girls were getting changed for PE, one of the popular girls was showing off her new belly button piercing. When she'd gone, I approached the same group of girls she was showing her piercing to and lifted my top up and showed them the scar from my belly button piercing. I told them it got caught on my top and ripped out years ago. They were fascinated and thought I was dead cool. The scar was from minor surgery as a baby. My mum hated my belly button, so she had my outie changed to an innie! I didn't even have my ears pierced, let alone my belly!

I also used to tell people my dad was dead. He wasn't. He just walked out when I was a baby and i didn't want to admit he lived ten minutes down the road with a new family and didn't bother to see me any more.

When I was 17, I decided that my destiny was to become a writer.
I took to wearing long dresses with floaty chiffon type scarves. Not content with that, I bought a packet of sobranie cigarettes ( for anyone who doesn't know, they're cigarettes but with pastel coloured paper in different colours, with a gold filter ) and a long cigarette holder.
I fashioned a chaise out of the ottoman in my bedroom using pillows and a throw.
Then I'd lay back on it, smoking a sobranie and sighing to everyone about having a writers block and I needed inspiration darling.
I must have looked like the love child of Barbara Cartland and Bet Lynch!
I never did become a writer and I stopped smoking when my mum found out and went mad.

I was also madly in love with one of my teachers. I didn't know his first name, just the initial, but I convinced myself it was Mark.

Anyway, I got him a Christmas gift and a card one year, wrapped it up, and hid it under my bed. Wrote the name Mark lovingly on the envelope. I never gave it to him - good job, found out much later his name was Matt!

But utterly mortifying because my mum found the present under my bed when she was cleaning.

I delete the awful Facebook statuses as I go along so I don't have to suffer it's reappearance next year.

Are you me? I started taking DS to rhyme time when he was 2 weeks old. To be fair, he did enjoy it once he was old enough to wake up for it.

One summer holiday, my friend and I tried to stage photos of us both in my back garden that made it look like we'd gone on holiday together somewhere exotic. Sadly, we couldn't make it work. But at least we were smart enough to realise before we posted all over Facebook! The washing line and shed were too much of a giveaway!

Be careful what you wish for, @DecisionFatigue.

All the posts about smoking have reminded me- my friends and I at about 13 all took up smoking, and all kept our fags in the top pocket of our blazers… and decided that they might make the pocket smell so we all kept fresh mint leaves in our pockets so our mums wouldn’t notice!

Why we didn’t clock that our whole uniforms stank I still can’t work out.

I have the opposite experience.

I read through my old Facebook posts and emails to friends and I barely recognise the person I was then, because she was so outgoing, chatty and full of life. I live a much quieter life and don’t talk much now and I miss that girl.

Oh god so many things

My fb memories from over a decade ago when statuses started with your name, I would say
“Noshow lomo poops sometime”

One was “I saw an actual tranny on my way to work” (prob be arrested for that now)

The biggest cringe, I had been split up from my first love for about 2 years but I still LOVED him. We saw him out and my friend being chopsy, said “OI xxx I’m freezing give me your socks for gloves” so he did. I pretended I didn’t see him to be all cool.
As soon as we got in a taxi home, I snatched the socks off her and put them on my own hands and sniffed them in like I was gasping for air. I just wanted to inhale his essence! I slept with those socks for weeks, sniffing in his essence.

Criiinge

Facebook Memories from 12 years ago: Longsight2019 says: it’s Friday night and I’ve got £76 in my back burner, and I’m gonna wax the lot!! The Milky Bars are on me…

Cringe