my middle name should have been 'welcome'
This is actually kind of sad in hindsight, but I spent a good few years being a total doormat.

*Picking people up/ giving lifts at any time of day or night, never asking for petrol money.
*Lending money to all and sundry, and feeling embarrassed to ask for it back.
*Rubbing backs, holding back hair, cleaning up vomit.
*Getting morning after pills for promiscuous friends.
*Trying to learn to skateboard - why all my friends were 17 year old boys when i was a 21 year old girl i still can't quite fathom.

It was a couple of years ago that I realised that its not me that was a super good person, its that my so called friends were in fact not good people, and since then I've made it a priority that all my friends are not people that will take advantage of my good nature.
(spent.fish flipping and gasping, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:56, 5 replies)

Inappropriate Racist behaviour
When I first went to university I was completely alone like most people are when they first go to university. The first people I summoned up the courage to hang out with were the people on my corridor in my halls of residence. They actually knew each other from school before and had requested that they be allowed to live near each other and the university had obviously granted that request.

They were all from inner London and I was a country boy from the valleys in Wales. They all played football every day in the evenings on the big garden in front of the halls. As they were going out from the corridor on the second day, I asked if I could join them and they said I could.

I was so grateful and I was literally fizzing inside with happiness because I had made some friends. Because I felt so energetic and happy, I played very well and scored quite a few goals and consequently felt even better when they asked me to join them for a drink in the hall’s pub. I was ecstatic to be there. I had arrived at the university social scene. Even better, girls knew them and sat with us and I felt awesome.

They were all doing business and economic degrees and as I was studying law I had to go on my own even though we all walked from where we lived to campus together in the morning. I suppose in my heart of hearts at the time I knew that we were mismatched because I was rather introverted and liked books and computers and they all liked football and clubbing. However having friends in university was great and even though I was making tentative acquaintances in the law department, going out and socialising was primarily with these guys.

I didn’t really understand they were racist until we were watching football in the common room one evening and one of them goes off on an angry tangent about black footballers not being as good as white footballers and that many of them came over as illegal immigrants. I didn’t say anything because I knew that as it was such a preposterous viewpoint that it had to be some sort of joke. When the others concurred with the original rant, I found myself outwardly agreeing so as not to be an outsider but inwardly being horrified and feeling extremely grubby.

It was only after this that I realised that there were various cues and hints that I had overlooked in my appalling naivety. The ‘joke’ shouting of abuse (‘wog!’ - I didn’t even know that that was racist such was my innocence) at various people of colour on campus, the constant comments and digs at people made within the group, and the name of our five-a-side football team, ‘White Stallions’ (I cringe at the thought that I had overlooked the significance of that).

I found myself detesting the overbearing and overt nature of the behaviour but I was unwilling to detach myself from the feeling of belonging to a group of people because of the alternative of being some sort of loner. I even considered going home because I couldn’t stand it but thought that that would be even worse to have to live at home again ( I don’t get on with my parents).

Things came to a head when we all went out to a nightclub and a group of Indian engineers who were at the club came to the attention of some of the people within our group. We were all pretty drunk and there was a lot of shouting and scuffling before we were all chucked outside by the bouncers. There was still a lot of posturing outside but things seemed to be calming down with me trying to get everyone to go to another club down the road, but then as one of our group uttered a final disgusting racial epithet under his breath about the Indians, things just erupted and there was a massive fight. These football hooligans obviously knew a lot more about street fighting than the poor Indian guys and there was kicking and blood everywhere.

These events seemed to freeze my brain and bone marrow. I tried to stop one of ‘my friends’ and I got a fist from one of them straight into my nose, breaking it, and knocking me onto the floor. I cradled my arms around my head and I was being savagely kicked by my friends and the Indian guys. I heard the sirens and the kicking stopped as people legged it. There was me and about 5 Indian guys on the floor moaning and covered in blood. Luckily, the sirens were for an ambulance and I got taken to A&E but after the treatment I was questioned under caution by the Police. Luckily, two of the Indian guys remembered that I had tried to stop everything and so they didn’t press any charges against me. This would have destroyed my potential legal career as law firms obviously don’t employ too many racist felons convicted of affray.

I named all of the people in my group and told them everything that had happened that night and past behaviour. With the Indian guys and the bouncer’s testimonies they were arrested and charged with affray and ABH. These convictions were upheld and they were booted out of university. It turned out that all but one of them had been charged with violence before.

I think they might have come looking for me once or twice but I requested that I move halls of residence and I didn’t stay after dark in the law library when I was studying so I didn’t really see anything.

I made more decent friends eventually and had a great time at university but sometimes I think of those first few weeks still and wonder how it could have turned out differently.
(powervator and NONE SHALL PASS, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:56, 11 replies)

school days
1. Push pops ( what the hell were they all about )

2. Pogs

3. Gob stoppers bigger than your mouth took you a month to finish it.

4. Wearing your school bag so low it was nearly dragging on the floor.

5. Smoking B& H fags from ciggy john’s shop who would sell you a cig for 20p looked like a peado and smelt of wee.

6. How small you could get your tie.

7. Not being a prefect. (I was forced to be one and wear a different coloured jumper “stood out of the crowd and was always there for a beating and the usual verbal abuse”)

8. Hanging about the park.

9. Smoking pot and regularly getting it taken off us by bigger boys.

This is just a small list of the things to do and buy to fit in at my old school. I never quite did looking at it and was always with the mongy kids.My trainers never made me the cool chav I wanted to be. (Referring to the other “school trainer” episode I have posted).
(Uncle Ed is lurking around, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:41, 4 replies)

Fit-inderella
As many of you will doubtless be aware (because I don’t half bang on about it sometimes), I have what you might call ‘Theatrical Tendencies’. Oh, the hell with it, darlings: I Love the theatre!

There is one form of theatre, however, that leaves me cold and with murd’rous thoughts in mind. This horrible, unforgiving beast is the home of soap actors looking for ‘diversification’ to avoid typecast. It is the dwelling of school parties and people who yearn for a ‘better Britain’. It is the last bastion of casual racism and sexism so heartily defended by the Daily Mail. I refer, of course, to Pantomine.

Oh, yes I did.

My tale, as it so often has in the past, starts with a girl. I was but eighteen, emerging blinking in to the bright lights of manhood. She was twenty, from Newcastle – a faraway and exotic place to a young man from Essex, and her Geordie tones washed over me daily as I drove her to and from college. I would have done anything, but anything, to be with this girl. Summer came and went, and in late September she handed me a flyer on the way in to college.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed, “Panto auditions!”

In case I haven’t made it clear already, I hate panto. Ever since I was small, I have hated panto. Panto and I do not have a comfortable relationship with each other. So how it came to pass that I said “Oh great, we should totally go for that...” remains a mystery.

~~~

Weeks later, and we’re both in. I am playing a two roles in this panto (which I will reveal shortly), and she one. I desperately tried to fit in during rehearsal, giving air kisses and dahlings and oh-my-you-were-wonderfuls, and all in the name of the Geordie who held my heart. Sometimes, I feared that my thinly-veiled hatred of the thing I was doing w ould show through – but it never did. Slowly, we became closer. She would touch me, lingering longer than she should, or hold my gaze, or bound over to hug me and only me. I was nearing my goal, of that I was sure.

Part of this panto was the Ugly Sisters being given a work-out by none other than the Spice Girls, who were quite the thing at the time. Joke-on-joke, though – they were played by men, and yours truly was Posh, in a very short dress. It was the Saturday Matinee, and the local Brownie group were in and watching the show. While doing the dance to ‘Wannabe’, there was a move that we did when we sang ‘zig a zig ahh’, which involved turning our knees out and opening our legs. The Geordie lass was dancing among the audience in front of me. As I ‘zig-a-zigg'ed she turned towards the stage, looking right at me, her face a picture of joy.

Time turned... to treacle. I watched her face as it transformed from joy, to confusion, to shock, to horror. I flicked my hips to turn for the next step of the dance, wondering what was wrong with her, when I felt a familiar thwap against my thigh. A murmur arose from the audience, and as I looked down to my feet I saw my testicles, pinned to my leg by the lycra of my boxer shorts. I looked out, and saw the confused and horrified faces of 30 Brownies looking at my nuts, while the girl of my dreams frantically tried to prise their attention away from the silly man. I grabbed the hem of my dress and yanked it down over my jewels; discreetly popping them back in to place and hurrying from the stage.

Surely, though, I could overcome this. The fact that I had tried so hard to fit in would be paramount in my beloved’s mind, overriding my embarrassing excursion. Not so, my friends. It was that very night, at the end of week party, that she said to me “Howay, that Prince Charming’s a canny fella, isn’t he?”, and walked off in to the night.

~~~

So don’t try to fit in, not even for a girl. You’ll only end up showing your nuts to some eight-year-olds.

Small Epilogue: In the remainder of the run, I wore briefs and boxers, thus preventing any further accidents.
( Devil_In_Tights the *real* DiT!, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:36, 3 replies)

How low can you go?
Rather fucking low, evidently.

As a spotty 15-year-old virgin, I turned into a goth and started self-harming in an effort to get a girl (a very nice girl, with an actual self-harming problem) to fancy me.

It didn't work. All I did was make myself look like a bona fide, complete, utter, 100%, unadulterated TWAT.

FUCKNUGGET.

That is all.

As a footnote, I'm still friends with this person, amazingly.
(Half of Stephen Fry's right buttock pissed on your dog on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:30, 1 reply)

It wasn't big and it wasn't clever.
Many moons ago when Porky was a callow 14, I was small, thin, wore glasses, had crap hair: basically a bit of an unattractive package. However I was well in with the cool kids. Yeah right. I was tolerated in their company because I was funny and always up for a laugh (have you ever noticed the coolest kids aren’t really very inventive? The ones I knew weren’t). But I digress. One of the kids at school, Huw, was rather strange. He was Welsh (although the accent wasn’t too bad as we lived in the North East), short, very hairy and had a haircut that resembled a suede brush. To top it off he wasn’t too bright in a special sort of way and had a pronounced speech impediment that gave the impression he was speaking in tongues. In other words uglier and less acceptable than me. Yay!

On the day in question we had suffered the stultifying boredom of double maths leading up to morning break. I had survived the class by burning the back of my hand with a magnifying glass to keep myself awake. There was only one solution, FIND HUW! Now although Huw was not one of the cool kids he had a rather severe tobacco addiction and was usually to be found in the boys bogs having a quick cancerstick between lessons. And sure enough there he was, enjoying in solitary peace and quiet what was probably one of the few things that kept the poor cunt going.

Only he wasn’t alone any more, he was surrounded by a bunch of predators intent on making a few moments of his day an absolute misery. There was a bit of ribbing which was designed to make him lose his temper (mocking his accent, hairiness and speech impediment usually did it) and hence in need of punishment.

Sorry, I had to take a break there. I’m not remembering this, I’m reliving it. It isn’t pleasant as you will see.

His first punishment was an arm twisting. Up until this point I had never joined in with the more physical bullying but today was my turn and at the behest of the genial and laughter filled cool kids I twisted his arm. Hard. I could hear the ligaments and tendons cracking and popping. I felt sick. Huw was squealing like a raped suckling pig and one of the more inventive chaps suggested we put his head down the toilet and pull the chain to quit him. So I did. I crammed Huw’s head into the shit speckled porcelain and someone pulled the chain. Huw stopped squealing and started making gagging, choking noises. Quite understandably. At this point my erstwhile pals took to their heels as the bell sounded for end of break. I would like to say I was torn by remorse and helped Huw get cleaned up for his next lesson but I didn’t. I did however look at his face and I wish I never had. The haunted look of pain on his face was almost unbearable. An almost animal look of dumb failure to understand why anyone would want to do this to him. His shoulders slumped and he picked his bag up with his good arm. Shouldering his way past me, he went home.

But it didn’t end there. His mother brought him back to school, cleaned up, after lunch. I was called to the head’s office. He had named only me. Fine. I took the physical punishment (a sound caning) and was then given the devastating real punishment. I was known to all the teachers as a bright but lazy scholar, my punishment? To help Huw after school with his homework. Every night for six months. I still don’t think it was enough.

I came to know Huw rather well and he was one of the funniest most irreverent little gits I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He forgave me quickly and with ease, he was like that. I also forgave myself eventually but I never forgot and I never bullied again. So that is what I did to fit in. Thanks B3ta, I needed that.
(porkylips looks better as the sun goes down., Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:28, 6 replies)

One summer when I was about 14, some of my schoolmates fell in with what were then known as 'Jesus freaks'.
They told me excitedly about the free coach trips they went on, with food laid on, pop, crisps, you name it, loads of fun.

As a bored teenager I was eager to join in. The only drawback was that the 'coach trips' were actually transport to big outdoor prayer meetings or Jesus picnics or whatever they were called, so you did have to fall in with the religious stuff a bit.

I didn't mind this and had great time, and met some very nice people.*

However, at no point did I relinquish my hardline anti-organised religion views. At prayer-time, I always opened my eyes and gazed around in wonder at the hundreds of raptured, God-loving young faces around me, thinking, How can they fall for this crap?

The slogan of this youth movement was 'One Way!' and members would always pose for photos with a finger pointing towards Heaven to demonstrate their faith.
So if you ever see a snap of a teenager from the early 70s wearing loon pants/parallels and tank top, pointing mysteriously to the sky, then they were almost certainly a One Way! Jesus freak, and might even be me.

*Including the serendipitously-named Arthur Blessit, whom I was taken to hear preaching in Manchester. He was carrying a full-sized cross around the world.
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:17, 2 replies)

Diet
I will get back into those jeans!
(Sahara Desert http://www.twitter.com/thesaharadesert for swears, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:11, Reply)

Shortly after the Columbine High School Massacre...
my friend had lent me his air rifle so I could practice shooting for CCF. I'd taken it into school to return to him as he lived miles away. In a moment of stupidity I decided to impress some of the guys who regularly bullied me by telling them I had a gun in my bag. They promptly took it out of my bag and started waving it around. One guy pointed it at the window at the same time the school caretaker walked past, who promptly dived behind a car for cover.
The head master took a very dim view of all this.
( 2 Can Chunder Word to your mums, I came to prod bums, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:10, Reply)

school trainers
Well when I was a wee nipper in the hey day of secondary school at the bright age of 13 the rage was trainers. Now not some normal trainers oh no these were nicks.Im sure you 80 kids among us must remember these.

Nike air were all the rage at the time and although I wasn’t from the local chav families that sent there spawn to my school.I just had to have these trainers, i wanted these snide nike air !! (why i will never know )

Well these chavs had this idea along with there kappa jackets and there stained trousers to wear these nicks. They were black and probably from a tramps market somewhere, but I wanted them so much so that I even nagged my mother for weeks to get a pair.

So there I was with my mother on a weekend going down to the local crappy market at the Arndale to purchase these £9.99 trainers to fit in with the chavy cool kids.

To this day I’m still haunted by the reminder of buying these and their fake plastic bubble on the bottom of them, and the black tick that went the other way round. Never again shall I hold my head up high.
(Uncle Ed is lurking around, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:07, 7 replies)

I have to do it all the time.
I live in a very strange sort of existence, really. As you lot may have noted by now, I have a rather overactive mind and a twisted sense of humor. So I clearly don't fit in all that well with a bunch of Dilbert-like engineers.

I also happen to be fairly well educated- obviously, as I'm an engineer. I read a lot, faff about on the Internet and can toss odd bits of pop culture into conversations, quoting song lyrics, movies, odd sound bites from other things as I talk to people. So I clearly don't fit in with the blue collar crowd.

I have an artistic streak to me, as evidenced by my writing QOTW answers that make the Best Of pages and by the stained glass work I've recently started doing, so I clearly don't fit in all that well with a bunch of Dilbert-like engineers.

But I have a strongly pragmatic side to me, an analytical streak that makes me good at making things and fixing things that break, so I clearly don't fit in all that well with the artistic types.

I love to wander around in the woods by myself, and find that I need the solitude of the trees periodically to keep my sanity. The animals are far easier to understand than people are, so I clearly don't fit in well in the city.

At the same time, I'm an engineer- and we don't tend to find jobs off in the remote forests. I also have kids in school, one of whom lives with me. So I clearly don't fit in with the wilderness hermits.

I'm an American in my mid forties, and don't know anything about Photoshop. I can take cool pictures of stuff, but I'm unable to manipulate them like everyone else on this site. So I clearly don't fit in well with the bulk of b3ta.

And yet, somehow I manage to fit in with all of them. I have the people skills and conversational skills to be able to interact well with engineers, redneck construction types, artists, university faculty, car mechanics, professional musicians and even people who live on the other side of the goddam Atlantic from me who use very weird terms in their daily language and have their own version of gallons and pints and measure distances in miles but measure temperature in Celcius and weight in stones.

So what the fuck does that make me?
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 15 Jan 2009, 14:04, 23 replies)

Embarassing pot-related incident.
When I was at school I was desperately uncool. One weekend while away on a Scout camp (yeah that probably didn't help) some of the cool kids were there and they offered my a joint. Thinking that having a toke would immediately boost my social standards and win a few friends I smoked a bit.

Despite not really feeling the effects, I joined in, cocking around in the woods pretending I was high.

The next Monday back at school, it was revealed, in front of a lot of people, that I'd been duped into smoking nothing more than tobacco mixed with some tea.

Despite taking the joke as best I could, spending the next three years being asked if I liked tea, or would like a cup of tea, or wanted to buy some [sniff, snigger, sideways glance] 'tea' in a little bag, was pretty shit. Needless to say it didn't help me fit in.
(Amputated is tickling the exit wound, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:57, 5 replies)

Confession
.
I make up incredible stories about my life and post them on B3ta as true.

To add authenticity I've created a series of sock-puppets who claim to have met me in real life (Tourettes, Mrs Legless, I'Anglepoise, Davros etc) - people who've actually been present at some of my stories - and use them to bolster my claims.

In reality I'm an accountant who's never been outside of Reading.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:57, 6 replies)

Football cards
At my primary school, when I was a lot shorter, everyone used to carry around a thick pack of the panini football stickers, the ones came with that shit gum which everyone used to throw away.

Anyways, since everyone was doing it, I started buying them, until it got the point that I had a pretty good collection, and had quite a few rare ones after doing lots of swapsees.

The only things were that I didn't actually have the album to stick them into, I had no interest in football (and still don't) and that at the end of the year, I just chucked them all away and started on the next years.

Mind you, I wasn't a spoddy kid with no mates or anything, just was one of those stupid things you do when you're young.

Now if they'd been a cliff to jump off..
( flapmeister knows where your mum lives, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:43, 2 replies)

I bought her several drinks and pretended to like the same music as she did
She still didn't let me "fit in"
( Crap Little Monkey Deathstar, so good they built it twice, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:42, Reply)

So, there I was...
...nuts-deep in the still-twitching corpse of the freshly-strangled goat, when the leader of the Satan's Bastards motorbike gang changed his mind and said he wouldn't let me join, on account of my Austin Allegro.

So I became a New Rom instead*.


* May contain traces of lie
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:42, 1 reply)

The day I became A MAN !!!

Twenty - odd years later this is still excruciatingly embarrassing to recall.

And I still haven't, and probably never will live it down.

Its the reason why I still to this day try and make excuses to wriggle out of family reunions.

At my sisters wedding last year I still received 'that look' from certain relatives, and for one awful moment I sat with my head in my hands as my old man went through the wedding speech, praying to the almighty that he didn't mention what I did twenty-odd years previously at a family reunion in my fucked up way to try and fit in...

So, lets go back twenty-odd years...

I'm part of a large Coventry-based Italian family. Family get togethers were HUGE on account of the Catholic aversion to knob socks and the contraceptive pill. Picture the wedding scene from the Godfather and that's pretty much where we are. Lots of tables with flowers, lots and lots of food and drink, and lots of Italians doing all the ciao bella shit and hugging each other. (Please note: to the best of my knowledge no member of my family is a member of the Mafia... though I do have my doubts about my uncle Primo).

So, young Spanky's hanging out with the older boys. Trying desperately to be accepted and failing miserably. Following them round like a lost puppy and trying to involve himself in their grown-up conversations.

Now, these boys were a couple of years older than me, basically a group of bored fourteen and fifteen year old boys, so inevitably their grown-up conversations involved women and, more to the point, how many women they'd 'done it' with.

I think I must've been really pissing them off by now, as one of them turned to me and asked: 'Spanky, how many women have you had?'

I think my answer of: 'I've lost count, maybe a hundred!' Was a little over the top. I mean, I was only twelve.

They started laughing at me.

'Spanky,' said another. 'Have you ever fingered a girl?'

And I was stumped...

Fingered a girl???

What the fuck did THAT mean???

So I charged forward: 'Yeah, only about five hundred girls!' I remember thinking that my cousin meant to ask have you ever actually touched a girl, and I had - I had pushed plenty over in the playground and run off giggling like a loon, and I had had a few girlfriends by this time and had done some low level hand holding and no tongues kissing.

The older boys started laughing.

Then one of them, sensing that I was getting flustered and was in over my head said: 'Spanky... Have you ever cum? I bet you haven't even cum yet, have you?'

'OH YES I BLOODY WELL HAVE!!!' Says I.

They cackle like a witches coven and start chucking stuff at me.

And I sulk off to sit with my mum for a bit.

Then, PING, I hit upon a brilliant idea. I'll show these fuckers how much of a fucking man I am, thinks I. So I slink off to the toilets, a knapkin in my pocket, in this strange hotel lobby full of Italians who look a bit like me, and...

Here it comes. The source of my eternal shame and the reason why my mum refused to speak to me for a few months after...

I slink into the toilets, find a cubicle, and quickly and very professionally knock one out all over the knapkin, making sure its as well and truly covered with my cock snot as my twelve year old balls could muster.

I then returned to the main lobby, found the group of boys, tapped one on the shoulder and as he turned I held my mighty spunky knapkin aloft and shouted:

'THERE YOU GO YOU FUCKER! LOOK WHAT I JUST DID!!!'

And time stopped. And I was suddenly in an awful lot of trouble...

Don't try and fit in.

Its bad for you.

But if you must try and fit in, make sure it doesn't involve showing off your manfat to your relatives.
( SpankyHanky, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:39, 21 replies)

As a bloke that has worn make up since school days
I haven't really done much to fit in over the years

Except.............

To fit in with a rather small group at school I pretended to be racist for a couple of years. The leader of this group moved to Australia and I didn't see him for years. He came to visit in the summer of 2008 and he instantly started with the same silly songs we made up and quoting lines from films/tv shows that contained racism.

It turns out he was just saying it all to fit in as well.


What a pair of stupid spaz cunts we were/are.
( Peej, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:36, 3 replies)

A mate of mine
(no, seriously, this is not about me) was very arty, and astonishingly camp, and was convinced for most of his teens that he must be in the gays, as most of his arty, literary friends were.

He even went to the lengths of meeting some guys over the net and eventually ended up with a boyfriend. It was only at the point of actually getting down to it with another man that he discovered he definitely didn't fancy blokes. Hence the immortal exchange:

'I'm sorry, I feel I may have led you down the garden path here, I'm actually straight'
'Then what am I doing sucking you off?'
[pause]
'I'm not really sure...'
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:34, 10 replies)

Utterly, utterly shit
These are as dull as a really dull thing.

At college a couple of the really cool girls in my Sociology class had these brilliant metallic navy vinyl bags. So I got one thinking their cool would rub off on me. Well, the cool girls approved of my new bag but no-one else paid a blind bit of notice. Bugger.

At school my friend had a long beaded necklace she wore as a bracelet wound several times round her wrist. It looked the nuts! My attempt... didn't.

A bunch of people here have iPods and I got jealous, so I went and bought me a 160gb classic. I now get abused for having such a massive plod when I should've paid attention to what plods people have here... mainly shuffles and nanos. D'oh!

And the worst? My best friend and a whole bunch of friends I went to school and college with absolutely adore Bon Jovi & Meatloaf and always have done ever since I can remember. So I taped Bat Out Of Hell and Crossroads off a lesser friend just to pretend I had the same taste in music as my close friends. I don't. I hate Bon Jovi and Meatloaf with a furious vengeance. To prove my point, I'm sat typing this listening to The Chemical Brothers* at full blast on my (160gb - dagnabbit!) plod.

*You must be joking if I'm telling you some of the other stuff I've crammed into my plod, y'know, the Abba, Steps, Disn- aw fukkit!

Length? It's 160gb (why?!) damnit! I've got at least a week's worth of solid music listening at my fingertips here!
(Sahara Desert http://www.twitter.com/thesaharadesert for swears, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:33, 2 replies)

Does anyone remember
a haircut from the 90s called The Step?

*shudder*
( djtrialprice, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:31, 20 replies)

I...
...grew my hair long, put on make-up, took to wearing short skirts, low-cut tops and frilly underwear. I even started reading Smash Hits and listening to Duran Duran!

But they still wouldn't let me into the girls' changing room.

Bitches.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:27, Reply)

Shots or pints (this might take a while)
Many a year ago I'd hit that age all men experience, where blossoming hormones force you to fall for the class whore and believe that underneath it all she's the sweet, caring, friendly woman you secretly desired. Of course, later on you'd realise your naivity and go on to spend evenings banging your head against hard surfaces as you muttered 'Why, Lord? Why?' under your breath in between comforting units of cheap plonk.

This lass was called Lauren. At the time, we were both 14 year old sproglets keen to explore this opening world, and from across the classroom I worshipped her and gazed longingly when my eyes were transfixed on her smoking outside school, snorting narcotics and fellating drug dealers. She was a princess. She had to be mine.

When news arrived that I had been invited to a gig she helped organise at a local club (albeit purely due to a 'I did say the whole class was invited, so I suppose that includes you' rationale), I saw this as an opportunity to reinvent myself as a trendsetter. If my darling could drink and undertake illegal drugs, so too could I. I would dazzle her at my ability to consume fermented liquids and inhale burning contraband, and she'd have to fight off the urge to pounce me there and then.

When you're 14 years old and have never drunk before, the golden rule would probably be not to down an entire pint of vodka in order to impress a woman. That and if you must drink to a point where hospitalisation occurs, make sure the woman in charge of the Accident and Emergency ward isn't your mother. I took both of these rules, melted them into rings and pawned off what I could for beer money.

Within half an hour, I was smashed. The most smashed I've ever been (and I'm a student with access to a free bar). Forget Dutch courage, I had the confidence of the entire membership of the United Nations under my belt. I was going to tell her I wanted her, and tell her in front of her boyfriend too. She'll see the light, and I'll see where the light don't shine on her!

All I needed to say was 'You look great tonight'. Just say she looks great. Nothing can possibly go wrong. What's that feeling in my stomach? Nomatter, there she is. Go for it.

'Laurensch, yew luk utterly amazsh'*HURL*

And like that, I'd smashed my hopes. A drug addict and her boyfriend doused in the remains of a bottle of vodka and some pepperoni pizza.

I should've just called it a night and gone home. Why didn't I just call it a night and go home? Why did I stay to laugh at the now sobbing deity? Why did I tell her protective father that he could 'take all that bullshit parenting for your cokehead kid and stick it up your arse, you balding cockgoblin'? Why did I fall over? What's all this bright light? Why is this bloke in a shiny jacket asking my name? Why is my mother here? What do you mean I'm grounded Mum? Why are you telling me to stop swearing? What do you mean where do I think I am? How can I be grounded? What did I do? Did I really tell the ward matron she'd be less of a bitch if she just got off her dyke arse and found some cock?

I spent the entire weekend racked with guilt and an unbearable urge to vomit, dreading Monday morning. Lauren would never look me in the eyes again. Everyone had seen me blurt my feelings and try an fight a professional bodybuilder before harrassing a police officer. I was a laughing stock. World, swallow me now.

I walked into the classroom that dreaded Monday to a standing ovation from the very people who taunted me my whole life. I'd given the bitch what she deserved, I was told, and done it with a fantastic effort. For the rest of my time at that school, I was made.

Somehow, I'd finally fit in.

No apologies for length; I've always been able to project fluids across rooms.
(FoxyBadger (try saying it backwards), Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:26, 2 replies)

DJing
When I was a young duck, I was almost completely deaf up until the age of 5 due to improperly formed eardrums. I had 3 sessions of corrective surgery over the course of 3 or 4 years and my hearing is now mostly okay, except in situations where there's lots of background noise. Even something like a busy supermarket means I can't hear someone who's standing right next to me.

This, of course, makes nights out with friends in busy pubs, bars and clubs thoroughly miserable for the most part. I end up getting frustrated and angry with myself that I can't join in the conversations because I can't hear what people are saying. People end up thinking I'm some sort of antisocial bastard because I don't join in the conversation, or worse still, appear to ignore them when they speak directly to me.

Therefore, I tend to go for evenings out where it's only a very small group of friends in a relatively quiet corner of a pub, as I can just about get by with those. Soon after I started uni, I found myself trying to think of ways of joining in the noiser nights out, and I hit upon the perfect solution.

I trawled through the pages of everyone's favourite online tat bazaar, eBay, and bought a cheap pair of decks and a mixer, and set about learning the craft of DJing. Within a few weeks I was reasonably competent, and managed to secure some DJing slots at a couple of the regular haunts of my friends. That way, I could spend the evening at the same place as my friends and not have to try to join in any conversation.

I suppose from this you could say I took up DJing in order to fit in with the nights out of my friends. There's another element to the story though - I've long since left uni, but the DJing has carried on, and I have a regular slot at a large club in Birmingham. I've DJed in plenty of places, and the one thing that's become seriously apparent is I seem to be about the only DJ around who doesn't dabble in illicit substances. Hell - I've never got even as far as class C.

I've lost count of the number of times though I've been cheekily slipped substances of various sorts as a 'thank you' (usually from bouncers). I invariably end up having to pretend to use them and end up flushing whatever it is down the bog later. So, there you go, I pretend to take drugs to fit in with the DJ crowd too.
( rubberduck should only be used after consulting with your GP, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:24, 3 replies)

Nasal condom flossing
I've done a few stupid things to fit in with my friends, but nothing in the league of something a guy used to do at secondary school as a party trick to impress his "friends".

He would take a condom, unravel it, and begin snorting it up his nose. After a little bit of snorting, he'd begin hacking and coughing like a 40 a day smoker. Then he would reach into his mouth and pull out the end of the aforementioned condom.

Now with one end of the condom in each hand, he would begin a bit of back and forthing of it, hence the flossing in the title.

It is as disgusting as it sounds, and this was compounded by, when finishing, he would release his grip on one end and let the condom twang out of the appropriate orifice, whilst showering any particularly close witnesses with mucus.

Length was I guess about 6 inches unstretched
(ShiftyBastard won the World Cup on World Soccer Champs 2010!, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:21, 3 replies)

Well, this one time...
...at Gay Pride 2003...
( Regger, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:20, Reply)

B3ta.
I try to fit in around here honestly. I talk about sex and coo at pictures of kittens and put : ) on the end of my sentence when I'm happy and : ( when I'm sad.

But I don't really think it's working because:

1. I'm old
2. I know bugger all about computers
3. I don't like console games or heavy metal
4. I'm not really that clever or funny
5. I rarely get pissed anymore
6. Can't do photoshop


Still I haven't been asked to leave yet....which is nice.
( girlinthehole, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:20, 11 replies)

When I was a lot younger
I used to knock around with a gang of lads during the recession. Now the blokes I hung round with were all quite big on being racist, homophobic and saw the the only proper job that a person could get was to be in the army cos then you could 'get out there and kill a few Johnny foreigners, innit'.

So in order to fit in I invaded Poland and it sort of took off from there.

Yrs,

A Hitler
(Fuckarma was masturbating into your handbag, Thu 15 Jan 2009, 13:20, Reply)