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?!

This is so funny 🤣 😂

I honestly felt like getting braces was some kind of thing that meant you were mature and nearly a teenager and I was so so desperate to be like everyone else 😂😂😂

Discussing how we didn't need feminism in the UK anymore with a work friend, and that i was an 'equalist'. 🤦🏻‍♀️ Funnily enough she wasn't best pleased with my support of JK Rowling in 2020. My interest in feminism was sparked by joining the LDS church then a couple of years later Mumsnet. Rather strange trajectory there, (I used to be a Wiccan.) Now I'm a radical feminist!

I had the whole angsty Goth teenager thing down to an art when I was 15/16. I'm still an angsty Goth, just 20 years older, and a bit more colourful. 😅

When I was about 18 I had a blog. Except it wasn't about me, it was about a much cooler person I was pretending to be. In my blog, I was a drummer in a band with my three older brothers (I don't have any fucking brothers) and had this whole elaborate life that I created. It was quite popular and people used to visit a lot and leave comments in my guestbook (as it was then). I loved it. It wasn't the lying as such, but just the fact that it felt real because so many people believed it was.

In the second year of juniors, I would have been 8, an American boy joined our school. He was immediately popular and I adopted an American accent. He sussed me fairly rapidly, but didn't make a thing of it.

I managed to fool his mother at the school gate and the next day, as soon as I said something, he said, ", You're not American, why are you pretending to be American?"

I stopped after that.

SinnerBoy

", You're not American, why are you pretending to be American?"

Oh dear. That reminds me of a second hand cringe on behalf of my DM.

We lived for a couple of years in South America because of my father's work, in a large community of North Americans.
When we came back to the UK, my DM persisted in using Americanisms for the rest of her life. For example, in the butcher's she'd ask for "ground beef" and, when the butcher looked puzzled, she'd say "Oh! You call it 'minced beef' here". "Here" was the UK where she'd lived for nearly 50 years!
She'd also tell people, when we returned home, that I used to come in after school asking for "cookies and juice".
This definitely wasn't true because I liked all the admiration for my "cute English accent" (a fairly strong South Wales accent but I took what I could get) and carefully maintained my British turn of phrase. This only got embarrassing when I talked about "rubbers" at school. I soon switched to "erasers".

She'd also pretend she could speak Spanish (she really spoke very little indeed other than the usual "please", "thank you", "hello" etc.) but, if ever called upon to do so, always had an excuse why it wasn't convenient/possible, like the person speaking to her had a very strong regional accent which she couldn't fathom (anybody who's read the Lucia books will recognise this behaviour).

Heh! I don't feel quite so silly now!

Oh god I did so many things.

Flashed my totally for free drinks.. somehow I'd often end up topless on a night out be it a dare or lending my top to someone or swapping tops at the pub table. Even had a security guard tell me I could get into a club for free if I let him shine his torch down my top so I did that every time I went 😳

I was so easily influenced when drunk...

I used to wear the most ridiculous outfits trying to compete with skinnier girls who had bigger boobs than me. I used to wear really padded bras too.

Thank god none of this was caught on camera and made viral

Mind u not entirely my behavior is much better in my 40s 🤣. After so many years having to be boring and sensible due to family etc we all need to let our hair down occasionally

Aaaargh cringe! I was convinced I could do an amazing American accent and used to sometimes go round pretending to be American when visiting London.

no one ever said anything but I know these days that I can’t do an American accent so god knows what people thought.

but at least they were strangers I’ve never seen again! You had to keep facing him…

Age 15 (1970s) my friend and I dolled up in pencil skirts and heels, went to a popular pub.( long before ID became a thing, if you looked over 18 you were in)
I decided to pretend I was French. This guy age early 20s-ish, started talking to us. He bought us a drink and I was babbling on in my "French " accent. I had also acquired a glamorous French name which now escapes me. He asked if we wanted to go on to a club (no chance, I had to be in by 11pm) We declined as I was up early next morning to catch a flight to LA 🤣🤣 My friend and I left the pub and parted company to walk home in different directions.
Then to my horror I heard a voice shouting my fictitious French name and it was the bloke from the pub.
He had followed me!! Omg I had to quickly make an excuse to get rid of him, something like "my engleesh 'ost eez waiting round zee corner in ezz car for me, I must leave right now!!"
Thankfully he took the hint and walked away
I've only just remembered this, one of the crazy situations I got into as a teenager
Double cringe 😬 😳 😅

Posting loads of passive aggressive "quotes" with the caption

"you know who you are"

Makes me absolutely squirm as im not that person at all but clearly was in my early 20s 🙈

Ffs. I was 30. And not Jamaican.

😂🤣🤣

Menace meets disappointed form tutor

I’m adding any historical use of ‘tings’ to this 🥹

I mean…we’ve all done the, write a text about how much we fancy a boy and then “accidentally” sent it to the boy rather than to our friend, right?

“Oh no! Sorry, that message wasn’t meant for you!” Now he’ll realise I love him and love me back…

Sounds Like 'Hilaria' Baldwin. 'How do you say? Cucumbear.'

My lovely colleague is from up North and we have whole conversations where I attempt to speak in her Teesside accent. She suffers me but Christ it’s cringe when I think about it!

I accidentally did this once, back in pre-smartphone days when mobile phones were bricks, and then in my panic sent the same text twice more.

My SIL insisted on talking in a fake Irish accent when she lived in Dublin, saying that she ‘picked up accents so easily’. I cringed every time I heard her.

I've also thought of:
I left a birthday rose for my crush under his mum's car wheel and watched as he and his mum ran over it...then cycled home crying. I have no idea what they made of that.

I used to tell people I could tell the future because I would predict song lyrics before they played. Didn't realise this was called memory! Was always songs I'd heard before. I vehemently asserted this though and was offended when any naysayers would say it was impossible.

In my new school for my first non uniform day I thought I'd look TDBs if I dressed sophisticated so wore velvet wedges, a velvet skirt and you've guessed it, a new Villa away shirt. Literally no one spoke to me all day!

The Britney calls one made me laugh so much I woke my baby on the boob. I guess I that's a current status update!

What's occurring to me now though is I think I still do some cringey stuff so it must be less about age and more my lifelong personality!

Pretended to be a journalist in a pub asking (men) about their evenjng for my report. My friend was the photographer. So cringe.

You sound a laugh @Flittingaboutagain

In my new school for my first non uniform day I thought I'd look TDBs if I dressed sophisticated so wore velvet wedges, a velvet skirt and you've guessed it, a new Villa away shirt. Literally no one spoke to me all day!

Bold combo. :) I wore my mum's 1960s embroidered velvet purple kaftan for one non uniform day for some reason. It was a village school so they just said loudly to each other deliberately so I could hear, 'what is she wearing?' Even I don't know what I was thinking lol

When I started college, I put on a fake Brummy accent to fit in. I have the most overblown fake Black Country accent, which was originally fake but it stuck.

@Flittingaboutagain
velvet wedges, a velvet skirt and you've guessed it, a new Villa away shirt

That sounds like an absolutely EPIC outfit, if no one spoke to you they were probably just in awe!!!!!! 🤩⭐

I actually think this is pretty clever and worth a go. We tend to meet people in such a passive way, a kind of self-initiating speed dating approach would save a lot of time (including years wasted in relationships with losers)!