To ask for your cringeworthy childhood memories?

[Forwardthinkinglobster]

The sort of ones that pop into your mind decades later and you still stop dead and think “Oh god!”

Mine was when me and my sister were aged about 10 and 8. We were young, innocent and firmly into toilet humour/funny body parts. Evidently, we thought it would be hilarious to make our (pretty straight-laced) grandma a hand made card which harked “HAPPY WILLY DAY” emblazoned on the front surrounded by some pretty terrible drawings… you get the idea. I still remember the initial smile on her face when we handed it to her in a cute envelope, which immediately sunk to a stern frown when she pulled the card out of the envelope!

Argh!

I was about 7 or 8 when I called everyone "a prick" because I'd read it on a tea towel on my friend's washing line. Including the supermarket check out assistant.

Staying with my dad and he lived in a flat in a huge old victorian house with a field behind it. There were horses. My sister and I would visit the horses every day and I fed them what I thought was hay that was lying around in the field. After a few days a couple of teenage girls walked over to us and told me I mustn't feed the horses that as it wasn't good for them. Instead of accepting I should stop and say sorry I didn't know, I angrily threw the ",hay" on the ground dramatically. Getting it on my poor sister and had a massive hissy fit. The worst thing is I was 10 so a bit old to behave like that. I guess I didn't like being told I was doing something wrong. Oops. And yes I cringe about it now

We were given the option to write to a French pen pal in year 7 and we got given their name and address so we could do so. I looked up each individual word in the dictionary screw grammar 🙄😜

They must have wondered what the hell this gobble-de-gook was! Spoiler alert, I never got a response.

When I was about 5 or 6 I was bought a green t-shirt with a picture of a large crab on it & 'I Caught Crabs in Karachi' written on it in equally big, bold letters.

I wore it with pride & didn't realise until I was in my teens that 'catching crabs has two meanings.

Seems minor but I was told to butter the bread to help prepare food for a party at a kids group I attended. Except I had never buttered anything before in my life, somehow 😅 Didn't dare to ask how to do it, so I just doggedly scraped the rock hard butter on, tearing all the bread slices up and ruining it, oh god I cringe at the memory.

Also we were asked to write our earliest school memories to read out to the entire school in our year 6 leavers assembly. I wrote a hugely detailed piece about how the reception teacher called me a "stupid girl" because I did a drawing wrong in her class when I was little. I blithely read it out in front of the entire school, while that teacher had a face like granite.

As an adult I'm convinced my y6 teacher let me say it because they must have disliked the reception teacher?! But also, fuck her for calling a five year old stupid 😅 I got my own back without even realising lol.

@justaboutdonenow I'm on the floor laughing at that one.
I'm going to reflect on my past horrors and report back later. Cringe being my middle name and all that.

Ellie the pet elephant that lived with my grandparents as they had banana trees

In the summer between year 6 (junior school) and year 7 (high school), some kids down the road had their cousins staying from Jamaica for nearly the full six weeks.

Through a combination of unconscious imbibery and fully conscious fangirling, I developed quite thick Caribbean accent, vocabulary and linguistic style over that summer 😬😬😬I'm white. Very white. My dad's a ginger Glaswegian fella levels of white.

I started high school sounding like I'd spent my formative years playing on the beaches of Kingston, not in Coventry. That's to say nothing of the elaborately braided hair I also sported on my first day of school.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I went to convent boarding school. We had to take it in turns to read passages from the bible aloud in class. Without realising what I was saying I said genitals instead of gentiles. Everyone laughed and the nun teaching us at the time was apoplectic with rage and I got the ruler for it. I didn’t realise what I’d done :-( Those nuns were wicked cruel, emotionally and physically. And they didn’t feed us properly! This was in the early 90s so it wasn’t that long ago. I still can’t believe such establishments existed. Luckily my school shut down but it was through bankruptcy rather than any intervention from some kind of governing body / authority.

At around the same time a family member asked me what I wanted to be when I was older and I replied a “naturist” when I actually meant naturalist… Again everyone laughed. luckily rather than being shushed or ignored my quite proper elderly relative kindly explained my mistake and told me what both terms meant.

i still struggle with talking in groups to this day. I do work with animals. I still shudder and cross the street if I see a nun…

Aged 7/8 I posted notes through my elderly neighbour's door stating that she kissed the milkman.
What the hell was I thinking?
Got battered though, fabulous parents.

A girl from school had riding lessons and her family took me along to the stables with them once.
While she was riding I tried to make polite conversation with her slightly formidable mother and innocently asked
'Can you tell a stallion from a mare just by looking?'
She said, vaguely gesturing, 'I think you look underneath...'
I'm sure no kids' riding lessons featured intact stallions and even as I said it I realised I was probably embarrassing myself and everyone around.

Aged 13 on holiday and supping snakebite with a few cool southern lads.

Arguing over the correct pronunciation of bastard. Me "bah stard". Them "bar stard".

Cue them trying to get me to pronounce it like them. Say bar.

I bahhhed like a sheep. Loudly.

Hardly your fault. Who bought it?

My dad, when he was in Pakistan for work.

He absolutely wouldn't have noticed how it could have been misinterpreted!

I remember in the juniors there was a lad in my year who asked if I would “shag him”. We were about 8 at the time and I had no idea what it meant so I just said yes!!!

I then asked my mum what it meant and she went ballistic and threatened to phone the lad’s father !!!!

Knowing how my mum reacted, I asked my best friend to ask her mum what it meant! She got her leg slapped for swearing 😂

Singing the monty python philosophers song to the dinner ladies at primary schools and singing a lovely song to someone I had a huge crush on at an open mic and it going very very badly wrong.

It's not really funny at all but I was utterly mortified.

The local high school had art classes during the summer and I loved going. One day mum couldn't take me so I cycled. It was 1990 and I'd done my Cycling Proficiency Test so I was good to go.

I was signalling to turn right into the school drive where out of nowhere a beige Metro knocked me off my bike. I rolled onto the bonnet and shattered the windscreen with my elbow. All the other kids saw me. The driver told me off. My parents took the piss out of me. It was awful. The only thing anyone was bothered about - parents included - was the shattered windscreen and became a Big Deal that I'd caused that.

I was so embarrassed I never did go back to the art class.

I remember telling people "Anon" was my favourite poet 🙈🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

When I was about 6, my more sophisticated best friend suggested we did a strip tease in the back garden. I had no idea what one was, but said OK and wiggled and disrobed as best I could, and my mum was (rather unfairly since I'd no idea what I was doing) FURIOUS, much more with me than with my best friend.

My dad's friend gave me and my dad a lift round to my grans house. I had one of those body suit vests on under my normal clothes.
When we got out of the lorry my dad said "your poppers have come undone and your vest is hanging out.
I literally just denied it. Even though my dad and his friend could see it, I could feel it flapping around.

I must've been like 6 or 7 and definitely felt embarrassed by my dad pointing it out.

Me and my best friend used to make up videos and stuff on her video recorder. One day we decided to make adverts.
I did one on sex talk/babe station type thing and remember moving my hands over my body and writhing around pretending to orgasm whilst saying random phone numbers.

We then decided to play the adverts to my mum and brother!!!. I seem to remember having a bit of a panic at that and my friend said when the sexualised bit came on we'd just scream and distract them. Which did work but I always wonder if my mum ever saw the full thing...
Must've been 11/12!

Oh god and another where I gave my computer to my granny. Cleared everything off of the hardrive etc only to be told months later that all my nude/sexy photos I'd taken for my boyfriend were coming up on a screensaver!! My dad had to find the photos and delete them. oMG. I want to die just writing this out lol.

When I was about 7 years old I went to stay on my grandparents farm. I was a bit chunky and couldn't climb over the gate...
So I took a shortcut through the yard just after the cows had been milked. Three inches deep in cow poo!!! Walked into the kitchen covered in cow shit 😂😂😂😂 my nan was still calling me smelly shelly at 80 years old 😂😂😂😂

I have so many, I was such an odd, socially awkward child.

I told my friend's mum I was doing karate, I wasn't I just liked.power rangers. Every time she saw me she asked how my karate was going what belt I was on etc and my stories about karate got more and more elaborate.

At guide camp I told all the older girls that my tent was staying up all night to have a gang bang, I'd heard someone else say it and I thought it just meant a party. Went home and told my mum we gang banged all weekend. Absolutely mortified just thinking about it now.

Lots of class related ones when I went to uni, things I'd never heard of or experienced and ended up really embarrassing myself.

@madnessitellyou omg that's awful!! Can you even imagine telling a kid off who 's been hit by a bloody car!!
Sorry that happened x x

I did something similar, bought a t-shirt at the local market. It had lots of French words on it, but I just liked the colour. One day I was wearing it and a stranger, looking very concerned, asked me if I knew what it meant. I didn't and hadn't even considered it! He never told me, I didn't ask but I didn't wear it again. I was about 12.