Things I still wonder why the hell I did that as a kid...

[TonytheFish]

20 years later, this still makes me wonder why I was such an odd child!

I was a bit shy granted, but still...

In 2nd year seniors, start of the new school year, new art class and teacher, everyone gets in and sits down at new desks, I was the last one in...and my spot at the table had no chair!

So, did I mention to the teacher that there was no chair! nope.

What I did, was sort of crouch down, into some fake sitting position and stay there for the entire double period! Pretending to sit! As if no one would notice...!

It is this sort of thing, that means I will never ever attend a school reunion!

Another show jumper here Balloon and Kerry - bikes were of course horses, we had a course in my friend's garden that we just used to run round - like child dog agility. We also used to sit in the back of the car, with the window open an inch or two so we could lead the imaginary horses behind the car

We were inspired by Anthony Andrews in Ivanhoe to try jousting. On bicycles with bean poles.

Mama was not happy.

Love these, I forgot how weird I actually was

OMG I am dying of embarrassed recognition of so much of this.

I salute the poster who invented spacehopper show jumping. Respect.

I very seriously played tennis against the wall with a plastic toy frying pan, with incredible commitment particularly at Wimbledon time, pretty sure that I would be seen (alone, in the back garden of a suburban semi) by some kind of youth tennis scout (who would have hopped over the next door neighbour's red hot pokers and waded through our rhubarb in search of the rising generation of tennis stars)

I wish there were a word for a certain sort of romantic seriousness of girlhood. The kind of emotional spirit of all the Noel Streatfield books, and The Little Princess, and things like that. That whole horsey / tennisy / ballety / nobility in adversity / genre of .... thing. What is it? What is the name of that feeling you are channeling when you are so sure your plastic frying pan is a tennis racket and the net curtain tucked around your pants is a tutu?

I LOVE this thread

I was a weirdy weird kid

Was convinced I could sing like an angel and tried out for everything singing related.

I followed two principles; sing as loud as you can and as high as you can. This included when wearing headphones as I was convinced if couldn't hear myself then I was too quiet.

At about aged 20 I recorded myself singing Christina Agularas Beautiful.

Oh my fuck, It sounded like a bunch of alley cat fighting

Turns out the there was a reason a large gap was around me in assembly and it wasn't be ause everyone was awestruck by my lovely tone.

Me and a best friend wanted braces for our teeth so made some out of a thin silver bracelet bent in half and wore them at school all day! Yes to the bad perms and fake tan.

I had a crush on a neighbour and remember putting on one of my mums nighties and leaning backwards out of the window of my bedroom blowing kisses at him. I also stalked him by shining a torch at his bedroom ceiling when I was in my garden feeding my guinea pigs. I can't understand why he never fell for me

Me and same best mate did a no smoking campaign for no reason and stuck home made stickers on neighbours front doors and cars with a poorly drawn fag with a red line through. We had regular stalls to collect money in our Barnardos boxes and kept the money for sweets.

We also took some bird eggs out of a next as we thought they had been abandoned. I put them under my angle poise lamp to hatch them. Poor things probably roasted . We were planning on days off school to rear our baby chicks.

was on holiday with a friend once and desperately needed a poo. We'd been on a beach all day with no trace of a public toilet. So I went in the sea and did a poo there.

Myself and a boy in my class drew fake felt tip pen moustaches on our faces about 7/8 yrs old.

Teacher spotted his and made him stand in front of the class to laugh at scold him (b*tch), I was terrified of the same fate and faked a sudden cold which necessitated a hankie being held to my nose the whole day.

Strangely the next day I had no cold but a faint felt tip moustache on a very red top lip, teacher must have struggled not to piss herself at my numptiness.

Did anyone else hang around houses that smelled like they were bbqing in the hopes that the occupants would come out and offer you some food?

My parents recently brought round some stuff in a poly bag which they had found in their house. I found an old jotter from OIS (Office and Information Studies) circa 1991. I had constructed a spreadsheet ranking boys out of ten for 'looks', 'clothes', coolness', 'personality' etc.

It totally reminded me of what being 15 was like.

I used to bang my head off the door so I would get a bruise and then tell people I had been in a car crash, so they would think we were posh enough to have a car

This made me weep

Okay my offerings....

Covered the bedroom floor with my collection of hard backed Dandy, Beano, Jackie annuals so that I could emulate a 'tap dancing in roller skates' scene that I'd seen in a movie. Knocked myself clean out cold on the bedside table.

Really wanted a dog but parents said no. So I took to sitting on floor with the newspaper open at the Ads page. Looking mournful and, when my parents weren't looking, spitting on the Puppies For Sale section so they would think the spots were my TEAR SPLASHES. Oh yes.
I was mortified when my mum said Stop spitting on that bloody paper I know what you're doing

At senior school, there was a craze of making yourself faint by holding your breath, counting to twenty and then the other girls would press on your chest while you exhaled. Cue brief fainting and OMGing, and general girly knobbishness. Only I took it one step further and pissed myself everywhere, ruining my fake Wallabies.

I sewed my thumb to my pleated skirt in home ec once. I was bored.

Noel spitting on the puppies for sale section of the newspaper has made me do a silent laugh and cry at the same time

Aged 12 thinking I was cool I started to smoke.

I can remember the first time I managed to inhale a cigarette properly without coughing a lung up, I was so chuffed I smoked a whole pack 1 after the other. I vomited all over my mates Mams living room floor.

When she got in from work we had to lie and say the dog had done it.

It was a while before I lit another one.

Aged 13 me and a friend went with her parents to Alton Towers and stayed over night. We stayed up all night doing our hair and make up by a really dull lamp light. We went out first thing the next morning relishing in the fact people were looking at us thinking we were gorgeous. We weren't, we were bright fucking orange. In fact we both looked like we had smeared mortar on our faces at a builders yard then dunked our faces in a bucket of brick dust. The 4 thick eyelashes per eye thanks to cheap awful mascara and far too much of it didn't set the look off either. When said friends dad seen us he burst out laughing, weeping "Jesus christ!!!!" in between breaths made us look in the mirror. My face still burns with shame thinking about it.

I always wanted cheerleader pom poms but never got any

But don't feel too sorry for me, I made a fantastic pair out of ripped up coloured tissues tied together with elastic bands

I recognise myself in so many of these posts! I was such a weird saddo. I wrote songs about saving the environment and had a 'band' which performed them and we genuinely thought we were amazing and were going to make it big with our hits

I was slightly obsessed with a couple of teachers during my time at secondary school - I think I just wanted a confidante as I wasn't happy at home. One teacher wasn't at all freaked out by my slightly stalkerish 13 year old behaviour and realised I just wanted to talk to someone, listened to my problems and stayed in touch when she left the school on maternity leave. She even attended my wedding years later! I remember thinking another teacher I had was really cool and I had my hair cut like hers, imitated her handwriting style and would dress like her on mufti days instead of wearing jeans like all my friends! Complete lunacy. In the latter case I was 15/16 Just shameful.

I thought glasses were really cool and faked poor eyesight by making my eyes go out of focus when I went to the opticians so I could get glasses! I actually have 20 20 vision... what a moron! I also really wanted to have my ears pierced but my mum wouldn't let me so I bought stickers that looked like really fake plastic gemstones and wore them on my ears! These were about the age of 9 or 10.

I am sure there are many many more. How my mother put up with my idiocy I don't know.

I once bought rizla and smoked tea It gave me a headache.

I know most of you were saying you were weird, but I think I was just too much of a wuss to do most of these things!

My friend, my sister and I made up our own exclusive club, we called it ACE which didn't quite actually incorporate all of our initials but we insisted that it did. We didn't really have any kind of focus or aim, we just spent ages and ages working out how our club would work, writing in little notebooks, devising reward and punishment systems for the members with little star stickers and black dots in a book(!) which we usually doled out to DF's sister because she was far too cool for us and wouldn't conform properly to our club rules and, er, yeah. That was the sole extent of our club!

Needlework lessons were so boring, I used to sew my fingers together. At least it made our teacher scream.

I've been thinking about which particular weirdnesses I should add to this thread and remembered my finest hour...

I wrote nasty (Mallory Towers inspired) anonymous notes to myself and reported them to teachers. I did it on and off for terms, and then again at secondary school! They must have thought I was such an idiot. I'm a teacher now and wonder how I'd react to a child doing this.

Poor little me. Just seeking attention I suppose.

Oh my goodness Bertie I smoked tea as well, we burst open tea bags and poured them into rolly papers there were 3 of us and we thought it was illegal haha, we jumped every time we saw a police car for months.

I once hid someone's flute deep within the clarinet section of the music cupboard and then showed up to "help" and miraculously found it.

Genuinely absolutely no idea why I did that - possibly to show what a useful sort I was?! (This was after music practice, I think that's about the least badass thing anyone has ever done).

I also really needed a poo when at my friend's house but their bathroom didn't have a lock so I just held it. I was having such a nice time I thought the feeling would go away. Unfortunately I then had explosive diarrhoea all over their cream carpet instead (which apparently is made worse by rubbing it with toilet paper. Who knew?). My dad had to come and pick me up. That was a pretty awkward car journey home. Apparently aged 13 or so I should have known better.

We also went through a phase of weeing in fairly public places, and on occasion filming it. WHY WAS I SO WEIRD?!!

Nb. Just to be clear, the final point relates to me and my friends, not me and my dad. I'm weird but not that weird

QueenBean

You lot are all weird

(Cos I didn't spend a few months when I was 3 pretending to be a dog who had to be taken for 'walks'; or make a heart out of polystyrene to give to the boy at school on valentines day - junior school; or regularly put some dark grey eyeshadow under my eyes and try to act mysterious about going to (imaginary) parties and not getting much sleep - aged 16!)

And I am so normal!