What's the most wanky thing you have ever done?!

[lardylegs123]

I cringe when I think of this. First year of university, and I was studying Languages. I'm from a working class, Scottish family and was the first ever to go to university. Mother's Day comes and I thought it would be a nice idea to write out the card entirely in the languages I've been studying I thought mum would be so impressed, but she just looked at me and said 'but Lardylegs, I cannae understand a word'.
I think I was too busy being a pretentious dick, that I'd forgotten about this mere detail

Oh god ive thought of one. At uni I studied Political Philosophy (wanky in itself), and in my first year I handwrote quotes from Rousseau in swanky caligraphy writing and stuck them around my room. What a twat....

I thought it would be nice to build the DC a tree house and sent off for a brochure to get some ideas. I should have known I was out of my league when the drop down list of titles included "Duchess/Major/Lord".
When it arrived the prices started at £40k for the basic model and went up to £200k for one with an Aga.

A friend of ours moved to glasgow from fife and within three days I kid you not he had a full blown weegie accent I was like eh nawww gonnae no dae that 😂😂

@Shade17

Cost me a fortune over the years, would have been happy with the water option from the soda taps behind the bar but never found the magic phrase to unlock that request.

Club soda?

ohhhhhhhh, is that what that is? I thought it was the same as seltzer, which was brought to me in a can and always tasted a bit weird and slightly salty to me.

Having just hit Google, I see that club soda is supposed to be the stuff with salts added, which means either I have a faulty memory or faulty taste buds

When DS was small my parents used to buy some toys from charity shops and keep them in their spare bedroom.

When we were in a toy shop a couple of years ago I pointed something out, trying to subtly get ideas for Christmas. He said "no I don't want that, Nanny and Grandad already one in the Games Room."

He also once screamed "I want hummus, I WANT HUMMUS" in a tantrum in a cafe when he was about three. He has food allergies so I always had to take food out with us because I could never rely on being able to buy something for him from the menu (usually hummus and crackers), but it did sound very very wanky.

Pretended to read the communist manifesto on the train for a week in the hope a hot guy I'd seen carrying a copy of the socialist worker would notice.

I sometimes do that thing that expats do and that I hate. I talk in my native language (french) with friends and I'm like "hmmm how do you say that in french already?"
I'm always sincere when I do so but I can see my friends mentally roll their eyes as I would do in their position.

Me every time someone asks for instant coffee in my house I scoff and tell them we don’t keep that filth in the house. I can’t help myself, even the mention of it makes me feel sick. It’s a flat white with freshly ground coffee or nothing darling. So wanky .

Eldest daughter complained in Tesco that there were 'not enough servants around' lots of raised eyebrows etc at said 3 year old whilst I hissed servers not servants. Felt very very wanky.

Youngest is called by a family name eg fitzwilliam on birth certificate but is just known as will by us. He was playing with some of his friends from school and one of the mum called all 4 boys over - we were having a cuppa whilst they were at a farm park with ' come along rufus, Montague, fitzwilliam and hugo, you dont want to make us late for xxx' we all 3 of us looked at each other in horror and wanted to die. The names all sounded so pretentious together the reality was they were called roof, goose, will and hugs I dont know what possessed her to call them by their full names that we never use

@Cheeeesecake

As a new cat owner, totally smitten, never had a cat before, went to register her at the vets. The questions were all: name, age, etc. Then they got to colour and I said champagne. There was a long pause then they said they didn’t have champagne in the drop down menu. I was trying to think of how else to describe her. Yellow seemed totally offensive & not at all representative of the depth of colour in her glimmering coat. Eventually they offered “gold” which I agreed on. Only after hanging up the phone did I think “god I’m a dick”.

Not as bad as when I first got a cat and was registering him with the Vets. They asked my pet’s name then “And who are you?” and I replied “His mother.”

Oh I only did this yesterday, I bought private eye for the first time to read on the train, made sure the cover was firmly visible. I really don’t know why!

@wingsofsteel

In sixthform (during the Thatcher years, in a very conservative voting area) I claimed to be a fervent communist. I was studying A level economics and I decided to answer an essay on free market economics by describing at length my personal teenage alternative theory. I also feigned outrage that the school library didn't have a copy of the Communist Mannifesto- then bought my own copy and carried it around occasionally writing in the margin and nodding like a twat wisely

I was at secondary school in the 80s. I remember going to the school library, asking if they had a copy of Das Kapital and being very put out when the librarian said that they didn't.

I was only about 13 so I think I was too young to qualify as a wanker. Plenty of pretentious wankery at University a few years later.

The wankiest thing I ever did (and there were many) was to affect writing 'seven' with a french slash. It stuck and I now can't write them the normal English way

Not only did I do this, I started writing the letter "e" like Greek e's and have never been able to change back.

When I was younger (around 19 or so) I was at uni and had a very lucrative career ahead of me after graduation. I was working to put myself through school and a woman at my work kept pestering me to date her son who was about 24, still lived at home, little education, no job (he seemed to sleep all day and play video games all night) and I don't think he had bathed in weeks years. She kept talking about wanting grandchildren and we would have beautiful babies together.
I spent all of my time at uni, studying and working so wasn't interested in dating anyone at that time but she kept pushing me and pushing me until finally I agreed to meet him one Saturday at the local park and she said he would bring a picnic with what she thought were my favourite foods. She asked me what my favourite flowers were and what music I liked. It seemed she was putting a lot of effort into the 'date'.

I never turned up I had no intention of turning up I just wanted her to leave me alone for the rest of the day. Saturday came and went and I felt so horrible for standing him up as I knew he didn't have any friends and probably hadn't been out in months decades. I also felt bad that his mother had probably pushed him into meet me and he probably didn't even want to be there. I still feel bad to have done that to him. In my head he was at the park waiting, feeling a bit low when it became obvious I wasn't turning up, cursing his mother for making him go to the park that day, and then his perfect woman walked past and stumbled over his picnic basket and they laughed and gazed into each others eyes and enjoyed the picnic while planning their happy life together.
I quit by phone that job on Monday and had started to work somewhere else so never saw the mom again. Hopefully her son had a happy ever after and the mom eventually got her grand babies.

@DesertSky

[quote funnelfanjo]@BritWifeInUSA having lived in the USA myself for a short while, I came back grateful for cosmopolitan UK (even out in the non-London sticks).

I'm a native English speaker (generic northern England) and when in the US, strangers' faces used to glaze over when I was speaking. I knew they hadn't heard a word I said, they were just experiencing some kind of mild panic that I wasn't talking like a local. Ended up adopting a "Hi, I'm new around here (even after a few years), could you help me please" schtick that gave them time to register and adjust to my accent. But yy to the not being able to put a different word or pronunciation into context.

So my wanky thing was that I ended up always ordering "Perrier" or "San Pelligrino" at a restaurant, because of the drama involved in asking for "water". One particular cringeworthy time I was saying water/H2O/the stuff that comes out of the faucet and getting nowhere with the confused waitress, until a colleague leaned over and said "she said she wants some WADDER" and the waitress suddenly got it. Cost me a fortune over the years, would have been happy with the water option from the soda taps behind the bar but never found the magic phrase to unlock that request.[/quote]
Club soda or soda water will generally get you the cheap/bar gun stuff. Sparkling water will get you Perrier and the like. Depending on the age of the server or bartender- charged water might work, but that’s iffy any more.

@yellowsubmarines - not that kind of wanky, more 'pretentious'. That was maybe a tiny bit mean, but I can totally understand why. Maybe he didn't turn up either, having met his dream woman on the way to the park when he dropped the picnic basket and she helped him pick everything up. He's now on BlokesNet telling the story about how he stood you up & feels guilty ☺️.

@LakieLady

The wankiest thing I ever did (and there were many) was to affect writing 'seven' with a french slash. It stuck and I now can't write them the normal English way

Not only did I do this, I started writing the letter "e" like Greek e's and have never been able to change back.

When I was a pre-teen I started to draw little hearts or circles above my i’s instead of a dot thinking this made me look really cool, I have managed to train myself out of the hearts but cannot seem to break the circles.

Oh God, so many.

During my "gap yah" after a degree in a liberal arts subject I decided I was far too cool to wear boring mainstream clothes. My style for the next couple of years was a mixture of band T shirts and hippy-style clothes that you get in the kind of shops where they sell crystals and incense.
I also told anyone who'd listen that I won't "sell out" by working in a corporate environment and living in suburbia, or even worse, the countryside where I would "die of boredom". In my mind I was an intellectual creative who was above all that.
I also proclaimed I'd always be up for partying all night, even when I'm older.

10 years later I work in an office at a large company, sold my city flat and moved to the country (turns out I like peace and quiet), wear jeans and tops from New Look and get a hangover from literally one beer

@saltinesandcoffeecups - I tried that and I think the problem I had was the server only ever heard the word “soda” and then asked whether I wanted Pepsi/Mountain Dew/Dr Pepper, and then we’d get into a thing if I said no, I want water/wadder. Mind you, I can’t complain too much as one of those situations lead me to discover Dr Browns diet cream soda. Yum.

Anyway, not likely to be travelling to America any time soon so all moot now.

Sorry, but Roof, Goose, Will and Hugs sounds just as pretentious! Think it's the combination.

@BustyDusty

When I was 13 I fancied the bloke in the newsagents who was probably mid-twenties. I made myself one of those fly hats with cut-up corks hanging off bits of string, and went up there wearing it thinking he'd assume I was Australian and exotic and fall madly in love.

He couldn't stop laughing.

this is the best!!!

I remember a French student teacher arriving in our Central Scotland school for a term to improve his English. He left speaking fluent Scottish including 'Do you ken this guy' and 'ye dinnae want to do that' I often wonder if there are some French people out there speaking English with a Scottish accent

Slightly off topic but my brother and his wife were on honeymoon in France when their car broke down, they ended up at a farm for a meal while the car was fixed, their daughter arrived who they had been told, "speaks English well" which she did, with a Manchester accent.

She'd taught French in Manchester and said it was either adopt the local accent or have the piss taken constantly.

I was in Argos collecting some items that were larger than I’d realised. As I was wrestling them into the trolley to wheel them back to the car I said to the sales assistant “crikey, these are larger than I thought they would be, I should’ve brought the big car not the two seater!”

I have no idea why on Earth I said that, and felt like a complete wanker. I’m cringing typing it out!

Writing 7 with a French slash is very useful for differentiating numbers especially if you have bad hand writing