Thread by @shockproofbeats

When I was 7, my teacher told us to write an article about “world cultures” for school over the weekend. I remembered it late on Sunday so in a panic I made up something called the "Icelandic Fish Festival", figuring said teacher wouldn’t know either way.

Sr Veronica was one of my favourite teachers. She was a Glaswegian nun who wore a leg brace due to a childhood bout of polio, and would tell us all about it. She was funny and kind, and always encouraged me writing things. This kind of homework would have been very usual for her.

I wasn't gonna let her down. So I stayed up all night making sure the essay delivered on the premise. As it got later and later, it became a bit more unhinged. Filled with asides and personal reportage. I believe I quoted "the King of Iceland" as if he'd spoken to me personally.

Can’t remember a lot about the Icelandic Fish Festival itself, but I said it lasted four months (!) and involved everyone eating, and dressing as, fish. Some of it was written present tense. Was I *at* the festival? Did I go every year? Who's to say? This was eight pages long.

The next morning I woke up with pen on my face, gathered the sheets of my report like an architect in a rom-com and readied myself to present it, surely the finest report to cross her desk all year.

In the event, Sr Veronica seemed utterly bemused when I handed it in, for two main reasons. Yes, this was a completely insane report, about a very clearly made-up festival, delivered with the breathless cheeriness of a segment on A Place In The Sun.

But it was worse than that.

The second – in fact the literal, atomic instant – that I handed it to her, I realised she’d not asked us to write this at all.

I'd dreamed that she had.

So I’d just written, and presented, this breezy 8-page memorandum on the Icelandic Fish Festival for absolutely no reason.

Not knowing what else to do, she smiled and said she’d read it out to the whole class. I said please no don't. But she did, and even they - a room full of Northern Irish 7-year-olds, so genetically sarcastic as to be basically evil - seemed genuinely worried for my mental state.

For thirty straight years, about once a month, I’ve thought about that kindly nun, delivering the line “boy those Icelanders LOVE their fish”, in a halting Glaswegian monotone, to a room of silent, horrified concern. Enjoy the rest of your day.

To ease the pain engendered by this thread, my bosses at @The_Fence_Mag hereby declare an embarrassment amnesty for all your most mortifying moments.

Please tell us THE BEST, WORST, AND MOST EXCRUCIATINGLY STUPID LIES YOU'VE EVER BEEN CAUGHT OUT WITH, either as a child or adult

Also, if you'd like to read a memoir of my childhood so packed with very good bits that this story did not even feature - buy my excellent and extremely cool book at mammybook.com