Parents
When I was very young I decided to start a "boy's club". Partly this was a desperate attempt to get more friends during the long summer holidays, and partly because I'd found a big flat piece of wood which was perfect for a sign.

So I got my coloured chalk and made a nice sign advertising my club, saying that I would organise games and outings to the local play park. I put it up at the front of my house, on the wall by the road.

I went off to play with my Action Man or something, occasionally looking out the window, expecting to see hordes of keen boys gathered excitedly round my sign. But no one ever came. I heard my mum calling my older brother to do something for her, but otherwise the boredom of the day was unbroken.

I went to check on it later in the day, and the sign was gone! I rushed in to tell mum, who said it must have been 'those bad boys from down the road'.

30 years later I realised that my mum had called my brother to ask him to remove the sign, as she didn't want loads of smelly little boys cluttering up her house. I asked my brother about this, and he said, 'yeah, of course, what did you think?' Another childhood illusion shattered.
(Smale is stuffed, Fri 14 Oct 2011, 10:24, Reply)