failed commando
Story from the old man.

Apparently aged 14 and out with his school on a camping trip. The man in charge is their ex-army PE instructor, a red faced moustached man slightly out of shape yet utterly convinced of his superhuman soldiering skills. All day long they endured his boasts of outrageous bravery, finely tuned martial skills and elf like woodcraft "I can kill a man with one finger/stalk an ant cross country for 100 miles/catch and skin a tiger armed only with a spoon" and so on. He took it extremely seriously and was deliberate and determined in his ignorance of how rediculous and transparent these lies were.

Finally he made a boast which they felt they had to challenge. "I could walk out into this wood at night and hide not 5 feet from you and not one of you would be able to find me. It would be as if I had literally vanished into the night".

"Bollocks sir." Came the reply.

And so the wager was made. At some time between 10pm and midnight, the PE teacher would leave his tent and hide himself in the woods. The boys would then have until 1am to find him. Game on.

At 10:01 precisely the boys watched from their tents as a decidedly drunken looking PE teacher crept out from his tent. They contiued to watch as he clumsily tiptoed a full 3 feet into the woods, stopping ince he arrived at a muddy ditch, they continued to watch bemused as he climbed into the ditch and covered himself with leaves, chuckling to himself all the while, as any good commando would do.

After having a fag and a cup of tea and a bit of a laugh at the daft old git, they wandered out into the woods making a lot of noise and giving of the occassional exaggerated shout "where could he be!" "it's amazing he literally vanished!" and "cor..we'll be here all night" and finally. "well lads it looks like we're not going to find him. But that teas gone right through me i'm just going to stop off at this ditch and take a piss." A chorus of agreement rang out and about 20 schoolboys approched the exact spot where the PE teacher was buried under the leaves expecting him to jump out at any second and conced the game.

But no. This man was so dedicated to his survival craft that he lay there unmoving and grimly determined as the pee showered down on his hiding place. He returned to the camp some time later covered in mud and leaves and reeking of urine.

Which is of course no less than any PE teacher deserves.
(Darth Vegas Poke It With A Stick, Wed 10 Jan 2007, 14:42, Reply)

They all speak English anyway
Not me failing (although I'm sure there are more than a few occasions when I have, I've just managed to block them out) - this story is about one of my ex-pupils in a French class I co-taught whilst desperately looking for another job in which I wouldn't have chairs thrown at me with worrying frequency.

In the pupil's French oral exam, he managed to get 0%. He did this by instead of answering any of the questions in French, answering them in English with a really bad French accent.

Teacher: Bonjour
Pupil: Ello
Teacher: Comment allez-vous?
Pupil: A sandweech and a can of coke
Teacher (slowly and trying not to laugh as this is being recorded to be sent to the exam board): Où habites-tu?
Pupil: I like to go sweeming and also going eento town with my freeends

etc, etc...

The good news is I escaped, have a lovely new job not as a teacher, and no longer have chairs thrown at me (very often anyway).
( hanabanana, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 15:34, Reply)

Keeping My Mouth Shut
.
I've a problem thats been with me all my life. I just can't keep my trap shut when someone offers me a good feed line. It's a kind of disability. So this is the tale of when I failed to score.

I used to be one of the DJs at Manchester University's Rock Night. It was a great job - unpaid but it meant that I could play the music I liked and was fantastic for chatting up the ladies.

Now doing this job were two of us - me and my partner in crime Denty who's featured in a couple of my stories. Nornally, he'd spin the disks and I'd be doing front-of-house dealing with requests from punters. It was an easy job. If you were female and attractive there was a chance I'd play the record you liked but if you were male you were told to fuck off.

So this one night this little rock-chick kept coming up and asking for various records. As she was stunning, I generally put on what she wanted if we had it. And when I say she was stunning she really was. About four foot ten with a gorgeous figure and long black hair. A real pocket Venus. I was smitten.

After a couple of hours I needed a pint so I took a break and headed for the bar. Pocket Venus made a bee-line for me and we were soon chatting away like we'd known each other for years.Things progressed and soon we were kissing. I was in like Flynn. Then she asked me to come home with her after the gig and my night was made.

Then it started to go wrong. Snuggling into my arm she looked up at me and said:

"With all the beautifual girls here tonight, why have you picked me to go home with?"

I couldn't help myself. It just came out.

"I've never fucked a dwarf before"

SLAP!!!

And off she stormed leaving me helpless with giggles at the bar....

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 11:23, Reply)

Failed no notice how many of my high school friends were queer.
Out of my closest circle of friends in high school, 3 out of 6 are now out of the closet. That's gotta be unusually high, right?

An amusing story is when one of 'em came out of the closet to me. I was at his gaff helping him write some software for his mother, and he just blurted out "Did I tell you I'm gay lately?"

The girl he was living with was so shocked she spit her coffee over herself. She knew, but he'd been very protective of his secret and hadn't even told his mother yet.

I said "Cool, does that mean I'm getting blown?"

"Not a chance." he responded.

Then I turned to the girl he was living with, who had her hand clapped over her mouth to stop more coffee spilling out. I asked "There's nothing worse than a discriminating queer, dont'cha think?"

That tipped her over the edge. Coffee sprayed between her fingers and out her nose, then she ran to the bathroom gagging and snorting.
( MarkyH feels like the H in Bob Hoskins' name, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 8:07, Reply)

I failed once.
I was sitting on my bed, feeling unwell, wrapped in a towel having just showered. That squirmy, gassy feeling hit me and I just knew I was going to do a spectacular fart. I informed my girlfriend, sitting next to me, that something wonderful was about to happen. Unfortunately, I'd failed to correctly judge the subtle signs in my bowelary movements. And promptly shat myself.

There really is no smell like lumpy diarrhoea wrapped in a soggy towel.
( mrlogic is copying your beard, Mon 8 Jan 2007, 15:06, Reply)

oral
In my Spanish oral exam, I had to persuade the examiner that she should take her mentally disabled son on an activity holiday, because it would be stimulating, blah blah.

I didn't actually know the proper Spanish term for 'mentally disabled'. So I tried to mime it instead. Using that internationally-recognised symbol for mongitude, the 'MNNNNNNNNNNNG' face.

I got an F.
(no way hose is staring unemployment in the face on, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 12:38, Reply)

I failed to become James Bond...
...and it's all my Mum's fault.

After uni, jobs weren't as easy to come by as I imagined (who'd have thought an English Lit degree has no practical application?) So I spent several months at home applying for everything available and getting nowhere.

One position was with MI5's graduate program. Quite liking the idea of being seduced by feisty Eastern European double agents, I applied, without thinking I'd hear anything.

One day, upon coming home from my temp job my Mum pressed a large, serious-looking brown envelope into my hand, saying, "Open this - it looks important." So I went into my room and opened it up - turns out it's an invitation from MI5 to attend the initial test stage of their screening process. Awesome.

Then the letter says - and I'm paraphrasing here - "This is the first step towards a career in which you will have to keep important secrets - not only from people you don't know, but also from your friends, and even your family. So you should start now - don't tell anyone about the nature of this interview." Rightyho, I can do that.

On cue, in comes my Mum. "Is it an interview? Who's it with?"

"No-one."

"Son, tell me."

"Mum, it's not important."

"Look, I've been putting you up here since you left university and I need to know that you're doing the right things. What is in that letter?"

"Mum - I can't tell you..."

*Mum grabs the envelope out of my hands and reads the letter.*

Mum - "Oh my god! You're going to work for MI5! Wait here - I'm going to tell everyone!"

So, essentially, I failed the first (and only) task MI5 would ever attempt to give me in roughly 30 seconds. Either I'd be the worst spy ever, or my Mum is a criminal genius.

(I did go to the tests - it was all very odd. I didn't get in, and the country is doubtless safer for it.)
(silencer, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 22:47, Reply)

not many people can say this:

I've failed at having a cat.

I bought a cat from the Cat Protection Society, took it home, it ran and hid. I had a nap, and when I woke up I couldn't find it. I thought it must've gotten out of the house somehow, so I left the back door open. I was in my room when it appeared from under my bookshelf and bolted out the door. To add insult to injury it didn't exactly run away: it lived under the house and in the backyard, but did the 'crap hiding' thing cats do (crouching down behind a single blade of grass) whenever it saw me.

Then I bought a kitten, which now lives behind the stove, under the sink, or anywhere it can hide from me. I call this one Heidi.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 15:20, Reply)

The Easiest Of Tests
I work with a bizarre number of middle aged women who are mostly kind, friendly and generally lovely to be with. With all the love in the world, however, some of them just aren't too bright. This was proved recently when one of them stopped everyone working and announced she had something spooky to show them all. She picked first on lovely Carole, a notable sucker for comedy moments and told her she was going to read her mind. Carole put on her best concentrating face in preparation.
"Think of a country beginning with D." She was told. Carole thought for an embarrassing length of time and then slowly nodded.
"Right, now take the second letter of that country and think of an animal beginning with that letter." Again the agonisingly long pause, followed by a nod.
"Now finally think of what colour those animals are." A quicker nod this time.
With a knowing smile our protaganist pronounced "But you don't get grey elephants in Denmark, Carole. Why did you think of that?"
There were knowing nods around the desks as everybody agreed that they too had thought of the same thing and it was slightly amusing, if not exactly a spooky feat of telepathy. Except Carole of course. Completely missing the fact that her collegue had just read her mind, Carole continued to argue for 10 minutes that "you bloody well do get elephants in Denmark! Carlsberg make a beer called Elephant and they're from Denmark so you must do!". After several minutes of attempted general persuasion and gentle mocking everyone decided it would be better just to give up and agree with her.

It was mildly amusing, but nowhere near as funny as when we all went on our breaks and Carole's daughter joined us for a crafty cigarette. We all gamely tried to surpress our smiles when Carole told her daughter she was going to read her mind, certain that with her tentative, at best, grasp on the 'trick' that she was sure to screw it up.
"Right, love, think of a country beginning with D." She started. Her daughter thought for an even longer time than her mother had and then nodded slowly.
"Right, now take the second letter of that country and think of animal that begins with it." And then we waited. After at least a minute her daughter shook her head.
"I can't think of one!" She said, causing us all to look round in disbelief.
"God! You're showing me up!" Carole said exasperated. "What about elephant?".
Her daughter gave her a puzzled look and pointed out that elephant doesn't begin with a U.
"A U?" Carole said getting frustrated. "What bloody country did you think of?"
"Dublin." She replied.
"Oh." Said Carole, not understanding why we were all howling with laughter at her daughter. "Well, you bloody idiot, you could have had unicorn!" Carole said.

The laughter stopped about ten minutes later. Sorry, Carole, but as much as I like you............FAIL.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Mon 8 Jan 2007, 11:17, Reply)

Psychometric test
One of the questions was "I can better appreciate...

"a beautiful poem"
"a well made gun"

[can you see what they're trying to do here, can ya?]

Hmmm. No 'neither', strictly 'either or'.

Other one I remember was "I'd rather live..."
"In a wood on my own"
"In a city centre" etc.

When it came to the discussion with the psychologist, he said he couldn't interpret the results as from my answers I appeared to be an introverted extrovert, a team player who preferred being on his own etc. I'd answered the 'plant' questions without triggering the 'he's playing the system' alert, but of the ten or so criteria they had to place people, the way I'd answered the questions had me placed at diametrically opposed ends of the same scales...

At the end of the interview he said "the only thing I can do with these results is ignore them. This is the first time this has ever happened."

I have a nasty feeling I've a file somewhere with 'NUTTER' stamped across the front.
(Countryslicker, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 11:17, Reply)

Oops
I once told a girl in Dublin after a rigorous game of lacrosse that I was "sweating like a Jew in a shower".

She failed to see the funny side.
(davefromkent, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 22:59, Reply)

One of me mates from work......
...failed to contact work one night, and uncharacteristically didn't show for work (and neither did his missus either). We thought it odd, but continued regardless.

Found out the next day. His mum had a heart defect and collapsed; was quickly rushed into hospital. While he was there the family were told it was 50/50 for the night. His father was so stressed out by the news that he collapsed with a heart attack also.

So....does he spend what could be his last moments with BOTH of his parents, or leave the hospital to ring work? He opted (rather obviously) to keep his parents company with his girlfriend's support.

Thankfully everything went well for both his parents, and his mother endured and survived a life-saving operation to prevent it from happening again. Me mate and his girlfriend contact our work HR to let them know what has happened, and arrange to come back into work.

Both are given disciplinaries for failing to call in . They were not best pleased. They took the aforementioned mate into a meeting and told him what was happening. He calmly and politely said "No offence, but I value my family over this shithole any day of the week sorry" and walked out back to his desk and carried on working, leaving the disciplinary team gobsmacked. His girlfriend however, went nuts.

Apparently she screamed at them for about 5 minutes, and finished with a royal "Stick your job up your arse" and walked out of the building. He happily got his stuff and followed her. Apparently both have never been happier.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 8:59, Reply)

absolute disaster
I failed at doing 2 things at once...

Trying to put my watch on while using the toilet.

At the crucial moment my finger slipped and I dropped my watch in the toilet and pissed all over my legs

:(
(gunken 100% better than tungsten, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 21:44, Reply)

Attacked by a horse
Well you certainly sound like a failure to me, Olga.
Did I say how I failed a driving test because I was attacked by a horse?
I was about to perform a reverse-around-a-corner, one of my best stunts, when a horse came galloping down the hill towards me:
"I'm going to pause a moment because of this horse".
"Drive to the conditions as you see fit".
"OK well I really think I should stop".
"Drive to the conditions as you see fit".
"OK well I'll stop, look its rearing up on its back legs".
"Drive to the conditions as you see fit".
"It's ever so close, perhaps I should try and drive away?.
"Drive to the conditions as you see fit".
When at the end of the test the examiner put on his sad face and said "I'm afraid you haen't passed this time" I said "did I not drive to the conditions as i saw fit?", he replied "you forgot to indicate when you came out of the test centre". Cosmic.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 14:29, Reply)

spectacular driving test failure!!
i used to know this girl, let's call her S. she had the WORST case of munchausens syndrome you have ever heard. i used to just nod and listen, stupified by the web she wove. by 21 she had been a captain in the QARANCS, a radiographer in the NHS, a major of something in the Army and fooled a guy into marrying her by being pregnant and then *losing* it a few weeks later. and that (6 months after she had been sterilised) she was having a FIFTH child because her daughter needed stem cells to cure leukemia.

so she tells me she's doing her driving test (i'm thinking rocket ship to the moon?). two weeks later i bump into her and ask how it went. basically, her instructor had a massive heart attack JUST as she pulled into the kerb where he was about to tell her she had passed. luckily a priest just happened to be PASSING BY and gave the guy the last rites.

but as he had died BEFORE he had signed her off as a pass, she was told that she technically hadn't passed!! i was gobsmacked. i hadn't told her that we had the same instructor and he had taken me out that morning. he had said he wasn't going to have her in his car again, described her variously as "fuckin' nutter" "nearly made my eyes and ears and rectum bleed simultaneously".
(superbabs, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 4:19, Reply)

Kama Sutra Champion
I entered the 2005 World Kama Sutra Championships in Amsterdam. The rules were simple: enter the competition individually and be paired with a stunner of the opposite gender. Then engage in all of the prescribed positions. The winning couple is that in which the male does not shoot his load.

My partner was a dusky Latino babe with a figure to make the Pope whip out his schlong. Long black hair, captivating eyes, hips made for delivery and a chest that you'd want to lap honey from. In no time we were doing the Reverse Crab Cake and my tip was nuzzling her cervix via a channel of the most exquisite moist flesh.

The secret to winning is thinking about something more mundane. But as she settled on my roost for the Sweetcorn Triple Viper, I accidentally took in her perfect figure and felt her sliding on to my enraged member with full appreciation. Fortunately, thinking of Margaret Thatcher's face saved me that time ...

But all was lost when we went for the penultimate Hot Dog Wheelbarrow. The sight of her rounded rump athwart my jack-hammer turgidity, and her silken baps swinging like fruits on the vine , set in motion a orgsm that was measured by seismologists in San Francisco. I must have pumped a pint of jizz into her enclasping dell.

Naturally, I failed to win. But she took me home later to complete the full programme with the Pancake Fritter Splits. That one took a lot of kleenex to sort out.
(frankspencer, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 13:05, Reply)

Not me but a friend...
was at a party a few years back and decided to walk home as was only about an hour away from his house. A quicker way home was to walk through Phoenix Park (in Dublin for those of you who dont know) and while walking through the park, friend and his accomplance decided they would break into Dublin Zoo and steal a penguin. So they stumble around the bushes and come into an open area not having any idea where they have ended up. Look down and realise they are tramping around on a flower bed, so continue to do so as was funny in a way as only wen in a drunken state of mind. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, 5 armed men start screaming at the lads telling them to get on the ground and not move! 'Oh shit' they thinks, 'what the hell is going on?'. Turns out they managed to ramble outside the Presidents house and were standing on her flowers!

Quick trip to the police station later..
'What were you doing in the Presidents garden? How did u manage to get past security???' asks the irate gardaí
'Eh to be honest we were trying to steal a penguin from the zoo'

Guards didn't believe them at first but seeing as they had two pissed students on their hands who couldn't stop laughing they finally let them go with a warning! They even stole pens and statement sheets from the garda station to proove what had happened!

So thats how two of my friends failed to steal a penguin :o)
(BigFatPaulie, Wed 10 Jan 2007, 14:24, Reply)

failed but in a good way
My first big failure was my French a-level. I didn't care because in my happy go lucky way I did an art AS and managed to get into a University. In Northern Ireland. Now, being a foolish and strangely attractive (no honest) young English boy, with as much knowledge about "the troubles" as particle dynamics, I went across with my heart held high.

The main failure of my entire time studying was "Failure to understand the seriousness of the situation"

I got off the ferry and realised that the police had guns. Not in a jolly French "look we have guns and silly hats" sort of way, but big fuck off guns. This was 1992 and the cease fire was just a happy little idea amongst optimists.

So, after a couple of nights in the bar singing away with the boys I failed to understand the significance of the songs in that funny heathen Irish language. One of my mates explained some time later that Big G was a major IRA sympathiser, a psycho and had anti English violence in his blood, and the only reason that I had escaped with my knees intact was that I had confused the fuck out of him and hadn't been intimidated. From then on Big G treated me like a "special child".

I failed to understand what happened when my friend was asked to burn out a car... later learned it was to remove evidence of a UVF beating. Who was I to worry? I didn't realise.

I failed to realise the offence that was caused by producing the SU Magazine in the only paper colours that we had. Red White And Blue. It lasted one issue after our editor got threatening phone calls, about his family and petrol bombs.

I failed to get laid too. Fucking Catholic Girls, all tease and no put out... though I think it may have been my complete misunderstanding of their culture.

But the big lesson is to pretend nothing is wrong and get drunk, it confuses the fuck out of people.

Failure to be concise is also one of my traits :-)


p.s. on the faliure to get laid bit. It was just the locals who avoided me. The ex pats and overseas students were only too happy to lend a hand... or whatever...
(rockers74 killed a man in Reno just to watch him die., Sun 7 Jan 2007, 12:19, Reply)

Jeccy..
.
I failed to believe your tale about the hacker who got into your mates BIOS and:

"changed the polarity of the hard-drive, burning it out completely"

Did he also scramble the dilithium crystals and leave Kryptonite lying about?

And he didn't, God forbid,"cross the streams???"


Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Sun 7 Jan 2007, 10:02, Reply)

A guy I used to work with...
failed at protecting his computer from a hacker. If anything he'd actually warned the hacker not to bother as he had feck all on his comp other than 3 firewalls and Quake 3 installed on there at the time, but the hacker continued. Most probs because the way he warned him was to leave a notepad message on the hacker's desktop saying "Fuck off, I've got nout!". That's it, just wind up the fecker.

The hacker carried on regardless, and eventually after 3 days got into me mate's comp, and found funnily enough fuck all. In a fit of nerdy rage, he went into the bios remotely and changed the polarity of the hard-drive, burning it out completely and almost taking the rest of the comp with it.

So, ex-work collegue had no hard-drive and had to buy a new one which ended up setting him back at the time a cool £130 (but it was a biggie).

But just before the burnout occured.....he'd printed off every detail of the hacker's attempts before the burnout, and even found out the guy's ip, street name and email address on the comp....oops, happened to be in the UK also. A quick glance in the phonebook and a small bit of deduction and he'd found the guy's name, full address and telephone number.

Apparently he took a day trip upto this guy's house in Devon somewhere and proceeded to beat the living shit out of him, finishing off with a baseball bat pc upgrade. Guess you shouldn't hack off the wrong people.

EDIT : yes, I personally don't know what the fuck I was typing about that "polarity" bollocks either; whatever the hacker did it did result in the motherboard burning the hard drive out though, which was the end result.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 16:49, Reply)

Temper, temper!
My Mum always cries if my sister and I do well in exams. Here's why:

Having been told not to lose her temper in her A Level exams, Mum proceeds to read through her English Literature paper. Unseen poetry module. The poem is one of those that makes no sense whichever way up you read it, whether you're pissed or sober, whether you're an academic or a member of the great un-washed. Mum's rather epic answer to the instruction "Discuss" was:

"I've read this poem over and over for over an hour and still don't understand it. Therefore I think it is shit."

Naturally, that came out as a huge resounding 'fail'.

Love as ever,
GH
x
(Ginger Hobbit, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 12:12, Reply)

Spectacularly failed to get into Oxford - failed it HARD!!!
I was at the world-famous Oxford University, interviewing for a place on the Physics course, and I was the first to be interviewed by Dr Brooker.

I'd been warned about Dr Brooker by the student looking after us - "do NOT attempt to bond with him!" she said. "He has NO sense of humour - don't even try!". Righto, I thought.

Off I went to to an hour of abject torture - I've never felt so out-of-my-depth before or since.

When I got back to the communal room, I opened the door, a broken man. "How was it?" someone asked. I immediately launched into a rant about the perverse evil of Dr Brooker, including an in-depth discussion of his satanic chicken-buggering tendencies, and a graphic description of the images in my head of him buggering a tesco's frozen chicken behind his desk and dancing naked around vestal virgins on the hillside, smeared on blood. I thought it was actually quite funny...

No-one laughed. They just stared open-mouthed. Someone slowly shook their head. I turned round, knowing what I would see... and true enough, there behind was Dr Brooker, entering his room opposite.

Apparently this tale became almost an urban legend - if anyone here actually *went* to Wadham College, Oxford, and heard that story - yes it's true. It was me.

If you're going to fail - fail in style, I say....
( Young Master Ploppy, Fri 5 Jan 2007, 11:40, Reply)

I failed to come
A few years ago, I was washed up on a Polynesian island inhabited solely by women who looked like Salma Hayek. It was a race of hyper-nubile identical offspring. For reasons known only to them, they strapped me naked to a post.

I discovered later that their religion had predicted the arrival of a god from the sea - slightly balding and with a fat gut, but with an ever- ready member. Numerous castaways had been washed up on their island, but had all been beheaded as ungodly. Why? Because the women believed that godliness was contained in a divine essence stored in the man's scrote. If they couldn't get it out, then the man must be a god. Go figure.

So they strapped me naked to this post and formed an orderly queue to test my divine essence. Imagine, if you will, an endless line of nude Salma Hayeks bending over to take a swollen member in their heavenly mouths, and you will see my situation. After 30 mins or so of expert felllation, they upped the stakes and began to impale themselves on my twitching ardour, using every orifice available to them.. Some of them got quite carried away, I can tell you, thrashing about on my glistening rod and moaning in their native tongue. I'd never seen so much perfect nudity attending to my tool.

After the whole island had exhausted themselves on my rigidity, they cut me free and made me a god - for I had not shot my bolt. They then told me that I would be expected to service them all until old age rendered me infirm and impotent. Only ... I would not be able to come.

My balls are the size of space hoppers.
(frankspencer, Wed 10 Jan 2007, 13:08, Reply)

Mr. F__________! You've failed!
A schoolfriend's father, an immigrant from southern Italy had to take a UK driving test after his arrival in Britain in the 1960s. Like a good Italian he put a crisp fiver on the passenger seat (for the examiner to slide into his back pocket in a single deft movement as he "adjusted his jacket") and went into the test centre. Out came the officious little Brit prick with his clipboard and was shown to the vehicle. He opened the door and asked: "Mr. F__________, whose five pound note is that?" "I don't know" said Mr. F__________, "it must be yours!" "Mr. F_______, you've failed!!" barked the examiner and my friend's father had his first taste of British "oddness".
(Roger Darce sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, Wed 10 Jan 2007, 4:01, Reply)

Enough To Drive You Up The Wall
I passed my driving test on the third attempt like all cool people do. But after failing for the second time my driving instructor told me the following story (which I made him swear on his life was true) on the way home in an attempt to cheer me up.

According to him his worst student ever was a poor kid called Steve whose mother insisted he learn to drive no matter the cost. At the time I was told this story (some years ago) that cost included over 300 lessons and 26 failed driving tests over a period of five years. Apparently after the fifth test my driving instructor (god bless him) actually went to their house and told Steve's mother that some people are just beyond hope and he felt guilty about taking any more money for lessons when he knew, in his heart, Steve was never going pass his test. Nevertheless, his mother insisted he keep taking lessons, and paying for them, sure her son would indeed eventually pass.

Naturally I was flabbergasted by this poor kid, who was taking lessons long before and after I'd learnt and passed. And could only repeatedly stammer "But how????". I mean, surely blind luck would make you fluke it eventually. My driving instructor just shook his head and explained that, no matter what he'd tried and how many times he tried to teach Steve better, every single time Steve had to press his foot on a pedal he had to look down for a second or two to find it and make sure it was the right one!

I have a horrible feeling that somewhere, even today, Steve is busy careering towards a busy junction staring intently at the floor while an examiner mutters prayers under his breath. Poor Steve.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Mon 8 Jan 2007, 11:44, Reply)

Building Bridges
As part of my GCSE Physics course we were given an exercise where we were given a stack of A4 paper, and we had to build the bridge that would support the heaviest weight. The class was divided up into groups of 3 to 4 pupils.

We had about two hours to prepare for this. The other students researched types of historical bridges, and read about tension and support etc. We just did what anybody would have done with an exciting stack of A4 paper, made paper aeroplanes and stupid origami figures.

Then it came to making the bridge. I was leader, and my great idea would be to make the biggest, heaviest log of rolled-up paper imaginable using absolutely no scientific knowledge. We made this giant railway sleeper of a bridge, like something a scotsman would throw in a field. Then we decorated it with slogans like "SUPER BRIDGE" and "MEGA LOG".

The other kids in my class had made these intricate models of historical bridges. Arches, suspension bridges. Rich kids, their parents were probably architects. Anyway, we tested each bridge in turn and our team ended up being the winner. No other bridge could come close.

Ahhh, so where's the Failure bit you may ask. The girl that I fancied at the time, her name was Louise, her group had made one of the most intricate bridges. After the test was complete the teacher said something like "you can get rid of the bridges now". In hindsight I think he meant put them to the side of the class, not smash them to bits...

But I had won, and felt quite headstrong, and wanted to show off to Louise and the rest of the class. I also assumed we'd never need these bridges again for anything. For some reason, and Im still not sure why, I picked up MEGA LOG and brought it crashing down on her intricate suspension bridge, smashing it to papery pieces.

We were disqualified, and I was given a 2000 word essay on Ghandi and non-violence to write before the next science lesson.
(borovan, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 12:58, Reply)

they told me
that I was outgoing, upbeat, confident, funny and attractive.

And that's the story of how I failed to get into Radiohead.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 8:37, Reply)

Sorry. I knew I was an epileptic.
I just couldn't stop looking at that strobe light.

...Oh, I thought that said 'flailed'.
( ArthurTheRat, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 21:20, Reply)

Market Barkers
.
.
In Newcastle there used to be a Sunday market on the quayside and one week I set off there to buy some new jeans.

As I was wandering around my attention was attracted by some guy on a stage who was giving his spiel about the wondrous goods he was selling. As he seemed to have attracted a large crowd, I hung around on the edge and listened to him. And became spellbound.

Everything he was selling seemed like an amazing, too-good-to-be-true bargain. There were delicate pottery figurines that he assured us were selling for £200 in the big stores and he was *giving them away for a mere fiver. There were rare African carvings that he *guaranteed* could be found on the Antiques Roadshow for several hundred pounds and he was knocking them out for only a tenner.

The list of goodies he was selling at amazing prices just went on and on. And, he confidentially assured us, the reason he could sell at this price was that all of his stock *might* have fallen off the back of a lorry and he had to get rid of it as soon as possible. Or at least before the real owners realized it was missing.

I was sucked in. Mesmerized.

I eventually got home having failed to buy the jeans I needed but proudly clutching my bargains-of-a-lifetime. I was looking forward to my family's amazement at my bargaining prowess. I burst into the house and showed them my new goodies.

A frying pan and a cut-glass decanter for £30. I was 16.

They pissed themselves laughing.

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 9 Jan 2007, 15:43, Reply)

GCSE Design Technology.
The coursework I submitted was:

* A Nail
* A Shattered piece of plastic
* An A4 piece of paper stating merely "Nails are not an effective method of affixing plastic to a wooden surface."

I received a U for ungraded.
( MarkyH feels like the H in Bob Hoskins' name, Sat 6 Jan 2007, 7:43, Reply)