» Exposed!

Bitter victory
My defining moment in my teenage life came on a school sports day when I was fifteen years old, competing in the 1500 metres. It should have been a moment of glory as I crossed the finish line to rapturous applause, led by the headmaster himself. But to this day nobody remembers me crossing the finish line a full lap ahead of my nearest competitor, and nobody talks about how I set a new school record for the event - one which still stands to this day a decade and a half later. Instead, the memory everyone has of this day is of me flopping to the floor, sweating and panting, spreading my legs and exposing my right testicle through the newly formed hole in my shorts. The applause was replaced by a swell of laughter that spread from forms A through K like a tidal wave of shame as I confirmed the idiosyncratic suspicion that I did in fact have ginger pubes.

Now I'm not sure what colour they were expecting them to be but even to this day if I walk into a pub in my home town and one of the girls from my year happens to be there, even though they're all grown up with a family and a career, they will still fail to resist the temptation to shout out 'Ginger Pubes' across the pub and then break into fits of adolescent laughter.

I leave soon after.
(Thu 8th Aug 2013, 14:25, More)