Hi,
I read your profile, it was very funny :) My name's James, I'm 36, single obviously, and into a lot of the things that you listed in your profile; particularly music, I love the Smiths ^_^ Anyway I've attached a link to my profile, get back to me if you're interested,

James.

EDIT: I think this might explain the surprisingly abusive response to my hilarious anecdote about shitting into a shoe.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 9:06, 1 reply)

not really OT
but I just got added on facebook by the school slag!!!! 20 years later and now Katie Kelly is now talking to me. Get in! She probably wants to shag me. Oh yes. Gonna get laid. That'll really show Lee Marshall.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 8:47, 3 replies)

I'm that kind of guy..
..the one who knows how to be cool in real life; someone who knows the Fonz is a pitiable fallacy, for I know I am the real Fonz.

I fit in everywhere. I'm supercool. Sexy birds, please message me..

Am I fitting in yet?
(raymond "three griddle pans" luxury yacht lovin' the christmas action, Thu 22 Jan 2009, 0:15, 2 replies)

.
Cut and bleached my hair yellow when it was popular (or at least in my school it was) about 6 years ago. Oh dear.
(paddysawyers music whore, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 19:08, 2 replies)

I've also pretended to like Dance music
Which is the auditory equivalent of anal rape to me and proved just as useful.

Thank goodness I stopped that nonsense and went back to good old METAL!! \m/
(RVD420 has his world coming down on, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 18:00, 2 replies)

I once...
...went into a Wine Bar.



Shhh!!
(RVD420 has his world coming down on, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 17:52, 4 replies)

The thing I do to fit in is
try to get on the "Best of" page by linking to the greatest website I have seen in ages.
Safe for work
( Gooch Is neither here nor there, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 16:25, 22 replies)

the truth, the whole truth
my name is trevor. i used to be a long distance lorry driver, but i lost my job when i tried to climb in the door of my cab and the whole lorry tipped over because i am so fat. now i live in my parents' basement and spend my life on world of warcraft and second life and i'm twice as fat as i was then. if i drop a biscuit down myself it's gone for weeks as i can never find it under all the rolls of sweaty useless disgusting flab inside my sleeveless vest.

anyway, a few years ago, i was starving, so i had three spicy hot curries in one night. mum didn't come in when i shouted in time to help me get up onto my feet, and when i farted, i shat the bed. there was liquid brown shit everywhere. that was the beginning of the end. when mum had cleaned it all up, i logged onto the internet and instead of slaying a few demons, i tried to find some real life supportive people to talk to about this new low in my life. i came across this website called b3ta that seemed suitably tasteless, but noone wanted to talk to trevor the truck driver.

so instead i said that i was a zomgirl, on the internet, whose bf had shat the bed, and that i had really big omgtits that i got out for everyone, all the time, and implied that i might get them out for anyone reading, if they were interested. and they all believed me, although some of them thought i was a twat which made me sad , but lots of people did want to talk to me, and i fitted right in and i've never looked back!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 16:04, 14 replies)

Not about me, but about a whole country.
This little story goes back to the time when East Germany was a separate country, for, in the days before the reunification, it was once considered rather racy in the DDR to have an English first name. Not surprising, really, as it supposedly made you sound all western and interesting, especially when the alternatives were names like Wiebke.

The trouble is, they didn't realize that some names are abbreviations of others. Plus they unerringly managed to pick names that have, unfortunately, become associated with all things Chav.

This is why, if you ever visit east Germany, you will be surrounded by Kevins, Ronnys, Mandys and Sandys. Imagine their shock if they ever visit Britain.
( Stevedix http://www.stevedix.de/blog, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 15:58, Reply)

I'm going to next year's halloween shindig
dressed as the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz. I'm gutted though, I really wanted to go as the tin man but they don't do a tin man costume in my size.

I'd almost go as far as to say I'd do anything to fi.... oh God I've lost the will to live.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 15:54, 2 replies)

I regularly post on message boards...
Invariably opening with "as many of you already know about me" before making up an entirely fictional story which concludes with a self-diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome.
(Sloppy Giuseppe, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 13:08, 10 replies)

I chose not to choose life. I chose something else.
My school seems to have lacked the hierarchical structure a lot of people are describing. I can’t remember one group shouldering the frigid cross of coolness (unless, could this mean, the cool kid was... me?)

No any sociologist studying T.P.S circa ‘95 would instead have seen a hideously mutating mélange of groups, squads, possies, gangs, mobs, friendly societies, cults and covens, all squabbling over the right to not go home in tears because someone had pushed you in a puddle and thrown your pencil case on the roof.

If you weren’t part of a clique you were a target, it was mob rule, rabid dogs have more compassion than children on a forty minute lunch break. In my second week I knew only one thing, I knew my retainer wasn’t getting thrown in the big green bins again; I had to find some friends.

My horribly rash decision one lunch time lead to me falling in with the wrong, crowd squandering my teenage years, and eventually left me alone and freezing at the side of a dirty brown lake. I was constantly feeling tench, I was on tenderhooks and wondering whether I should pike it all in.

Thats right, I chose not to choose life. I chose something else. I chose fishing. Fucking Fishing!! I spent the years between twelve and eighteen fishing!! I want that time back, I want house parties and teenage sex, I want being tricked into smoking spiffs made of lawn, I want to be able to say that I dabbled, dabbled in anything! I want a collection of pogs, I want to know the dance to the Macarena, I just want to say I’ve lived!

I haven’t picked up a rod in nearly 8 years now, but there’s still not a day goes by where I don’t think about what I’ve lost and how easy it would be to fall back into the comforting old ways.

My name's Asser and I’m a Fisherman.
(Asser, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 12:31, 4 replies)

Sad sad sad sad
I went to a 18th birthday party of one of my workmates - Christ know's why, only one of my friends was there, and the booze was crap. I ended up in the kitchen drinking Grand Marnier and other crap liquers at a fair rate.

I digress. Later it was pass the parcel, and by the time the wrapping was thinning down, I could tell it was a small bottle of something. I also knew as a 'hard drinker' (I drank double vodkas at lunchtime) it was bound to stop on me at the end, and they would want me to down it.

It did, I did.

Needless to say, I was sick later and they had to call my grandparents to take me home where I pretty much passed out in their spare room. Still, no stomach pump was needed.

Why did I do that? Why was I so desperate to be accepted by a bunch of losers working at a bingo hall (for them a career).

Sorry for the lack of funny, but it's something that really sticks in my mind as one of the most stupid things I've ever done, especially as I hate getting drunk.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 10:36, 8 replies)

I set the scene:
I bit the arse off a caterpillar.

~fin~
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 10:25, Reply)

Your mum

( Goatworrier had your mum and she was shit, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 10:25, 6 replies)

I think I've discovered why I'm a mis-fit

I've been wracking my brains all week for a time when I've done something to fit in, and I can't think of one.

Not one.

From being an un-cool punk at school, not going to uni, not getting a proper job, marrying and having a kid young with no career plan and yet keeping a middle-class outlook. The only teenage-looking couple at Queen Charlotte's Hospital - all the other couples were in their 30s. Both Londoners we moved to Yorkshire in our mid-20s. Refused to let our daughter have a telly in her room or internet access, both went to uni as mature students before it was popular, getting factory jobs without becoming working class, getting a school-leaver's job when I was 35, getting a job in a finance department with a degree in Art & Design...I could go on.

The only place I really fitted in was when I was travelling round as young man, on my own. I was just like the other solo travellers, in that we were all mis-fits if you know what I mean.

Even here on b3ta - I can't photoshop, my top QOTW posts are amongst the longest ever and yet I NEVER apologise for length. I visit OT but don't do HSH, and I don't bitch about it either. And I don't do bashes.

My wife says I'm a chameleon, and I think she's right in a way. I don't fit in, I just melt into the background. I can get on with most people but don't really like most of them. I have nothing in common with most people, but even as a hermit I stick out - I'm married...to another hermit.

I don't mind though, it's what I choose and it suits me.
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Wed 21 Jan 2009, 9:40, 5 replies)

School
.
I went to school with a lad called Ian Hamilton. I hated him. He was the best footballer, the best high jumper and had smashed the school record for the cross-country course.

The teachers bloody loved him. They lauded him as the Great White Hope and gave him time out of lessons to train. The plan was to have him compete in the County Games and then bask in the reflected glory when he won.

Not if I had my bloody way. I was fed up with him strutting around the school as if he owned the place so I decided to sabotage him.

The day of the County Games dawned and Ian spent the morning doing light training in preparation for his dash for Glory on the afternoon. After lunch he headed for the sports hall to get changed and then it was on the bus to the games.

So me and two of my gang followed him. As he went into the sports hall we grabbed him from behind and dropped a sack over his head and body and tied it tightly. Then we frog-marched him around the back of the sports hall and into the football pavilion. We left him tied to a chair in the changing rooms and scuttled back to class.

And then the shit hit the fan when he didn't turn up for the bus. The teachers were running around like headless chickens looking for him whilst me and my cohorts sniggered in the background.

But the headmaster knew me too well. He knew that of there was any nonsense going down that there was a good chance that I'd be at the bottom of it. So he charged into my classroom and bellowed:

"Legless! - What have you done to Fit Ian?"

Cheers
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 23:23, 11 replies)

Some go to utterly ridiculous lengths.
This is mainly a pictorial answer, but I'll post links rather than the images themselves.

Here we have the first of a series of examples of how hard the Swedish tried to fit in with the rest of the Golden Age of Disco- right down to the muppet hairdos and the puffy shirts.

This is what happens when you let the professional from the smorgasbord restaurant join in with his glowing mane.

I think that even the Bee Gees would have rejected these outfits.

I suspect that they took the Osmonds just a bit too seriously.

The guy on the left here was so desperate to fit in that he adopted the girl's hair style for his mustache.

I hope that someone can translate the title of this and tell me that it's not really "Three Boys And A Girl", as that would be just a bit too frightening for words.

Hmmm. Not sure, but I think I used to see these guys at carnivals, waiting to be knocked over with baseballs.

Ummmm... no.

And finally: I've never seen an accordion look so frightened in all my life.

In conclusion: nothing personal, Sweden, but really, trying to fit into the Dance Music scene with things like this just isn't going to win you any points. Trust me on this.

EDIT: Credit (or perhaps blame) where it's due: the pics were swiped from here. And oh god, the beat goes on...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Tue 20 Jan 2009, 21:47, 8 replies)

Things we do to fit in
When I was a 15 year old lad, back in '84, my first girlfriend lived 12 miles away in the nearest town to my village. There was only one bus a day and that was at 7am, so there was only one answer. I had to cycle.

However there was the question of how to cycle 12 miles in the 28 degree summer heat, and still look like a New Romantic when I got there.

With my limited funds, the nearest I could get to looking like Simon Le Bon was to purchase an army surplus tunic, made of that green horsehair shit. Looked cool,I thought, as long as no one noticed the sweat patches on my back and armpits.

This left me with the final issue of my hair. Now I still have hair that has a slight wave in it. Not curly enough to look after itself, but just enough life to sentence me to daily hairwashing, or having a special needs hairstyle. Aged 15, though, my hair was full Duran length, and the slightest puff of wind would send it into a sort of demented furball, which given my weekly quest of getting closer and closer to my girlfriends fanny, simply wouldn't do.

The solution? Simple.

I'm sat here still cringing, 25 years on, at the thought that I used to ride down the main road every saturday, in soaring temperatures, wearing that fucking tunic and a matching green wool balaclava.

Never did get any further than her tits.
(MrStabby, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 19:14, 3 replies)

DAN!!!
To fit in, or to fit me in, my parents changed my name.

See, as some of you may be aware, me and my brother are of mixed-race heritage, and once my dad had done a runner with the housekeeping, my mum felt a little worried that our background would be the source of much heartache on our parts.

So she decided that when I went to 'big school' - I would be called something different. I was white after all, so I was given a 'British' name as a forename, and my true name was shoved to the middle.

Good idea, you think, right? Wrong. For a start my mates wondered why all the teachers were calling me something different from what they'd called me all their lives, teachers were bewildered at parents evening when my mum was still calling me by my proper name (silly cow), and there were rumours going around the neighbourhood that our identities were changed because we'd done something nasty or something nasty had been done to us (this had previous - a significant number of kids on our estate had fled from abusive homes and were given new identities to stop their pasts coming back to haunt them).

I hated it, there was a sense of detachment from who I was, and as I grew older, and joined university, I decided to embrace the old me and went back to my old, Muslim name.

I've never looked back. I'm proud of my heritage and I don't care what people think of my name. If they've got a problem with it, it's theirs, not mine.

I don't feel any resentment towards my mum for doing it - she had the right intentions - but that teenage identity crisis sure helped my pathway to therapy.
(scentless_apprentice takes two bottles into the shower!, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 18:17, 4 replies)

teenage drinking and vomiting
must have already been mentioned in this topic, but when every man comes of age (17 or so) he must embark on the legendary period of peer pressure drinking. took me about 2 years and numerous vomitings before i could genuinely say i enjoyed a pint of lager (+ that period of about a month when you discover smirnoff ice which is somewhat more agreeable on your teenage taste buds and stomach, but then realise it is in fact horrible and leaves you with furry teeth in the morning).

i drink guinness now. not sure how that's happened.
(TheManWithThePlan cussed your mum on, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 16:40, 5 replies)

Five Years...
Today marks my fifth B3ta birthday. I don't post much, and have never come up with anything of note. But logging in today, seeing that little candle, seeing the "0 months, 0 days", seeing that it was five years ago today that I first joined up has made me reflect on what has happened to me since 20th January 2003.

Materially speaking, I now have considerably less than I did then. I have less money, a smaller house and a fridge filled primarily with cheese. I have no job, having recently been made redundant for the second time in a year, and so am facing the soulless nightmare of the dole for the first time.

My dreams of being a writer are in ashes, having not written a thing for months now, and having mild palpitations whenever I try. My characters lie dead or dying on the page, my dialogue is just so much empty bleating, my plots are the worst dregs of grave-robbing cliché. I am not the man I thought I was.

I have a couple more crow's feet and my hair is a shade thinner than I remember it every time I look in the mirror. My back hurts when I stand up or sit down. I am gradually coming to realise that I have come to the end of my potential, and I still have a good few decades of this left.

While this may sound self-pitying and a cry for a dissenting opinion, that's actually the last thing I want. This is me trying to be honest about what's landed me here. The simple fact is that I have placed emphasis on fitting in with the world of recreation rather than the world of responsibility. There has always been another chance waiting around the corner. There has always been something else in the pipeline. There has always been tomorrow.

Fitting in is not necessarily a bad thing, no matter how you do it. What's important is to fit into the right way of thinking and then follow it. I'm at the point now where this actually rings true, and doesn't sound like the kind of empty platitude you read in a lazy advice column, and so I wonder how January 20th 2013 will find me. Rich/poor, ill/well, happy/miserable. Either way, I hope to see that little candle again, and the "0 months, 0 days".

And some kind of Goatse abomination, because that's what it's all about.
(Sir Harrington Titsmith disgraced himself on, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 16:15, 9 replies)

Teenage drinking
I've mentioned before that I went to a rugger-bugger boarding school, and my hatred of being surrounded by too many bloody women (you try living with 63 of the buggers for five years, and you'll end up hating them too). I've also mentioned that I was quite lonely there, given my propensity for classical music, spending most of my time in the music school, the boat sheds or the fives courts, and being a film geek. I knew I was a geek, and was perfectly happy about it, until it was pointed out that being geeky was bad (they never explained why).

Anyway, one of my many abortive attempts to fit in with the coven of tanned, blonde-haired pubescent harridans-in-the-guise-of-angels that constituted my fellow boarders was by drinking. It was an unwritten rule: you come back from the holidays with a coke bottle filled with filched alcohol from daddy's liquor cabinet. For all the other girls, this was generally vodka or expensive brandy. Some of them were even bought bottles of malibu by their spoilt, lazy mothers ("shhh! don't tell daddy! It's our little secret, eh girls?!") in a late attempt to bond with their hormonally-imbalanced bitchy little crotchfruit.

I had no such luck. My parents would never give me alcohol to take back to school, as they didn't approve of breaking rules (although they were perfectly happy to indulge me in fine whiskies during the holidays, thankfully). So I raided their drinks, and took an inch off the top of everything, and mixed it all up. This resulted in a blend of several whiskies that it was a crime to mix with anything other than a bit of water, some home-made sloe gin, and some chatreuse. There was a mystery ceramic bottle in there as well, which I didn't touch as it looked too mysterious.

I took this foul mixture back to school, displayed it proudly in my domitory, took a long and confident swig, and promptly vomited it all back up again. It looked like toxic sludge, and smelled worse. I got laughed at, and the quality of my upbringing was called into question as obviously "my parents didn't have anything decent to drink". Philistines (the girls, not my parents).

So at half term, I took some from the mystery ceramic bottle in the drinks cabinet. The bottle was covered in faintly twee, badly-rendered pictures of bucolic Chinese life, had a wax seal, and was nearly full. The liquid inside looked like water, had the consistency of slightly oily water, and smelt like a mixture of Hitler's nob-cheese and Windowlene. I didn't taste it. Into the coke bottle it went, and back to school with it.

I turned up on the first night back, along with a gaggle of screaming imbeciles talking about boys and hollyoaks and daddy's new skiing lodge. The customary gathering of back-to-school alcohol started. I produced my bottle of clear liquid. "Chinese vodka" I smirked, when asked. "Sure, here you go!" was my answer when queen bitch wanted a swig. A heart cackle was my response when she took a hefty mouthful, choked slightly and started crying that her tonsils felt like they were dissolving. She'd taken a large mouthful of MouTai.

I still didn't fit in, but that was the first time I'd genuinely laughed at something amusing in months at that school.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 15:07, 15 replies)

Stand Up For Yourself - And Pay For It
Even as a child, I understood the importance of being yourself, standing up to peer pressure, following your own path and ignoring what everyone else thinks. As a consequence, I was miserably lonely, ostracised, bullied to the point of PTSD, and to this day I'm socially uncomfortable, bitter, and have almost no network of friends. Humans are social animals. It's in our nature. You have to either fit in, or find a place where you do.
All you people who are proud of yourselves for never doing anything to fit in? You're not iconoclast rebel hard-boys. You're just so average you fit in without trying. So all you self-congratulatory "I never did anything to fit in, hooray for me" cuntsmugs can just Fuck. Right. Off.
(MrCanoehead Marzipaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 14:35, 20 replies)

fridgi.d
The thing was I've always hated parties. That's why I was in the kitchen, alone, that night. It really is. I was just standing there, really. I was standing by the fridge in this dirty kitchen. I could hear the fridge hum softly.
Its noise was a bit disturbing. I wanted to be all alone, but the noise of the fridge kept buzzing into my edgy day dreams. I was there, listening to the fridge. It went “hmmmm”. Just “hmmmm” over and over
I was all alone, just me and this noise, I realised that, at least, was something.

The people I’d been with for the last three days, well, they were all worn out from the drinking. The almost sleepless nights. I think, for me, it’d gone way beyond fun about an hour after opening time on the second day.

After that most of me wanted to go home, but there was always a reason against being on my own like this.

So, I’m in this kitchen listening to this fridge churn and splutter over. It’s still just going “hmmm” over and over.

Down below, I can see all the neon from Hackney but somehow I’ve convinced myself that something, somewhere has happened, and somehow I am the last person on earth alive. I imagine all the neon, shining on the corpses, the dead people in bed, in the shower, watching TV. I feel sort of comforted by this. Then the door opens. Then this guy comes The man who comes in moves with the familiarity of ownership. He doesn’t stumble, or look awkward.

As he opens the door, I can hear the conversations from the front room, and from somewhere more distant, but still, I guess, pretty close, the sound of a baby crying.

This guy who’s come in, he looks at me, kind of in an understanding way.

“Hi” he says looking straight at me. All of a sudden, I get this strange feeling. I feel he can see exactly what I’m thinking. I put an arm across my chest.

“Hi” he says again.


He looks at me, but it’s not like he’s looking at me, more like, right into me. I remember how I have studied rock stars and promised myself to try to act as cool as them.

He’s got this bottle in his paw. He finishes it and then puts it down carelessly on a crumpled tea towel. He opens the fridge. As I follow him with my eyes I can see the reason the fridge is so loud is because the freezer bit is over frozen, and the fridge door won’t close. I sort of want to clean it, but think what it would sound like if I offered so I do nothing, I just stand there. I’m not even drinking anymore. I looked for some soft drink when I got here, but couldn’t find any. I know that once you stop drinking, that’s it, that’s the end but since I got here, I just seem to have stopped caring. I think about asking him, “got any squash” but say nothing because I know what it would sound like.

I can see the fridge is maybe just under half full of green bottles, with another load of bottles on top. It’s like someone started chilling beer a while ago, maybe a night ago, but then forgot to replace what they were taking.

"You're too thin" he says "You need to eat" he says. To me, I guess, as there’s no-one else here.

I try to think of some lie about breakfast, or dinner now, I guess, or not being hungry but he’s already turned around. He doesn’t wait for me; he’s at home.

From the cupboard between my legs he takes a dirty frying pan. I move to the side, squashed against this white fridge, but from where I am, I can still see cold grease and oil in the pan. He adds more crisp n dry from a greasy bottle next to the cooker and turns the blue gas on. He hums this old tune to himself, but I can’t work out what it is and I don’t like to ask. The cooker is old, like you never see on television. Then he opens the fridge again. I can see there’s not much food in there. Next to and under the beer are some crumpled plastic ASDA bags. I can see the ASDA logo on them. He opens one and there is this dried half an onion in there. He wraps the onion back and pulls the next one out. It’s a cube of yellow. Maybe butter or cheese. The fridge is churning, like an old car going up a hill in the middle lane of an empty motorway.

He puts the yellow in the pan where the crisp N dry is starting to splutter angrily, then these sausages. I can see from the packet, that these are “happy shopper” own brand and I don’t even want to think about what shit they’ve got in them.

As they cook, he turns the tap with the dirty red cross on it. The tap coughs, then sort of coughs, then spews its dirty brown water out. He takes a plate from the cornflower blue washing up bowl in the sink then holds it under the tap for maybe five seconds. I can hear the pipe judder as he turns the tap off. As he reaches for the dish cloth he sees me and he sways, just a bit. As he sways, he reaches down to steady himself, then pulls the dishcloth and knocks his empty bottle so it does a hollow roll along the worksurface until it rests against the fridge.

All of a sudden, I start to feel like I haven’t slept for four nights.

I can see the dregs of the beer dripping in big drips onto the stained linoleum next to the fridge. Between the fridge and the worksurface is maybe an inch, and it’s a black, hairy, greasy inch.

He doesn’t bother with the bottle; he just turns away, and dries the plate.

He says nothing while the pan coughs like a waking smoker. Then he turns, scoops the sausages into the plate.

"Eat!"

He says.

I take the plate.

I know there’s no way, no way, I can eat those.

There’s just no way

And there’s no way I can explain it to him, either.

"They’ll be wondering where I’ve go to"
I say,and the lie sounds hollow, even to me.

I hold the plate far in front of me, as far as I can, as I walk down the corridor till I go into the lounge. There’s no spare seat so I sort of squat at the side of the sofa, next to the sofa. I can see the ashtrays which look like dead explosions. I just hold the sausages, too shy to talk to the girl next to me.


The others are still trotting out their shitty little drug stories. He comes in. I pick a sausage up and eat it, as cheerfully as I can. I sort of gag, but he's looking at me so I try and turn it into a smile.
"These are lovely" I say, but they're not. They're disgusting. I am still too shy to pass the sausages to the cool looking girl next to me so I just end up sort of holding them and hoping that he's found someone else to look at.
(sirolimus, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 14:33, 9 replies)

What I did in the bit before the holidays...
Good lord... this was 1981! A time (for young Sparkie) of Iron Maiden, Hawkwind and Motorhead, big hair.. (hoooj Hair) and T shirts with carefully removed sleeves..

...and a young Sparkie was sitting at the back in the maths lesson, with three other "lively" girls. This was 2nd set, so we did work, we just arsed about a bit.. We were prone, however, to fits of the giggles at the best of times. One of our number, lets call her Wendy, produced a small brown paper envelope from her huge pink furry pencil case (calm down at the back... this one had a zip, and sat on the desk!!)and showed the envelope to me, smiling "I got this in the joke shop at dinner, you wanna try some?" I inspected the envelope, it looked fairly innocuous, apart from the writing on one side. There it bore the legend "Passion Powder" in Victorian Fairground-style writing, I looked at the teacher who was head down over her desk marking work.."What the hey, go on then!" Jo and Debbie who were sitting either side of us leaned over to look at the packet.. "Can we try as well?" they asked.. and so pretty soon the four of us teenage girls, sitting at the back of the classroom were passing a paper package back and forth, wetting fingers and dabbing white powder, then scooping the powder into our mouths. Wendy put the envelope back. We sat and looked at each other for a moment.. then the giggles started, and before long we were helpless with laughter at the stupidity of expecting anything to happen because we'd taken stuff from the joke shop..

After a while we dried our tears of mirth and settled back into some lovely maths.. and thought this was the end of the matter...Until the Friday of that week (The maths lesson happened on a Monday)I was sitting in my tutor room, when my tutor read a slip of paper that was in the register. Her face was a picture of concern as she told me to report immediately to the deputy heads office. "As in NOW".. so bearing in mind I'd pretty much forgotten what happened in Monday afternoon's maths class, I walked down the corridor with an increasing sense of foreboding. I knew, I'd not been seen smoking for a while, it'd been ages since I last got caught skiving.. I had no idea what was waiting for me in the deputy head's office, apart from the deputy head, of course.

So I knocked politely, entered when asked to do so and sat down, at the invitation of the Deputy Head. She also had a concerned face on, unusually, as she was known for enthusiastic PE classes, and enjoying a laugh the rest of the time.. I was seriously worried now... what on earth could it be? had there been an accident involving my parents? murders?... then she dropped the penny herself..

"Sparkie, are you in any trouble?"

"Not that I know of" I replied

"You're sure? Not with, say your parents, or drugs or anything?"

"Noooo.." I was still nonplussed

"Its just that you, Wendy, Jo and Debbie were seen taking drugs in Maths on Monday!"

OOOh shit...The blood raced to my face as I tried to come up with an explanation that would both sound plausible, not drop anyone in it, and not be embarrassing.. there wasn't one, so I had to explain to an exuberantly healthy, happy, PE teacher and deputy head who was a bit innocent that I wasn't taking class A drugs, I really wasn't, I had no intention of taking them, no not ever, and everything was fine at home. It was for sale at the joke shop. and yes, it was called "Passion Powder"..whilst my face reddened like a tomato in the sun..

I'm sure I could hear her laughing as I closed the door behind me...
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 14:14, 2 replies)

Fitting in with Earth Mothers
You know how there is always a 'cool kids' group - they were the ones in primary school who had the scented pencils and rubbers, the ones in senior school who had cigarettes and knew what a blow job was, the ones in university who had a dealer and knew the meaning of 'Indie' - actually anyone who was at uni in the 90s will know that it means Independent Label - bands that didn't sign with EMI or the like.

Anyway, after education has finished and you hit the real world there don't seem to be as many 'cool kid' groups…until you have your own children.

My first experience was at a mother and toddler group. I'd tried ones held in the local church hall but they were full of mothers wearing stained tracksuits and fleeces and children who screamed when they didn't get their e-number juice.

So I decided to go a little up-market.

The local eco-friendly, knit your own yogurt parent/care-giver and small unique, precious, talented individual of few years group.

For two hours I would sit around with my twins attempting to fashion angels from pine cones and tufts of raw wool collected from hedgerows. Other parents (all wearing Birkenstocks, hand knitted yurts and full face hair) calmly sang Icelandic folk songs into the small ears of their own Jocasta, Iphigenia, Fred or Ezekiel as they made their beautiful creations.

Then we all drank organic apples juice and ate some freshly baked bread - if you were a regular you could help to make this feast which I believe carried the personal yeast of Majorie the group leader.

Afterwards we sat around in a circle, children upon our laps or wandering around freely - if they chose to because an unhindered child produces a free and unrestrained personality at one with the universe - and we sang more folk songs. If we were really lucky we might get to sing 'The Wheels on the Bus' but that was generally frowned upon because of the pollution and high carbon footprint of any combustion engine, however, it was community transport so that made it okay occasionally.

The last time we were allowed to attend my sons were going through phase of being extremely curious about their world - Marjorie encouraged this initially.

Only a few days before I'd had the firebrigade out to my house because they'd set the chimney alight - long story, yes we had a fire-guard, no they were not alone - I was in the kitchen, and you wouldn't believe how early the inventive and cooperative gene sets in with twins with destruction on their minds.

They decided to investigate the fire extinguisher - presumably they'd learnt their lesson and had now become safety conscious, at two years old.

Marjorie wasn't happy when her hand knitted dogs' hair jumper got ruined.

Neither were the other parents.

Fire extinguisher foam stains natural fibres.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Tue 20 Jan 2009, 13:29, 13 replies)

I lied to myself and everyone else
pretended to like the "hottest" guys in my year. Bought clothes I didn't really like so people would stop laughing at my second hand stuff.
Stopped reading books above my age level and tried to fit in with the cool kids.
Pretended I liked boys when I actually didn't (went so far as to have sex with a boy - and hated it).

one time when I was a little younger (13), someone asked me if I had ever "picked up" anyone. Being a completely innocent and naive 13 yr old, I said "yeah I guess - I picked up so and so from her house the other day" - only to be ridiculed for apparently picking up someone I actually hadn't. so and so in question was actually a dear friend of mine who to this day still laughs with me about it.

Now I'm just me. hyped. ghey. bright. I wear what I actually like and I listen to whoever's music grabs me the most.
(Poppet some assembly required., Tue 20 Jan 2009, 13:18, Reply)