It was the late 70s, and I was about twelve, spending my summer with other bored pre-teens who were too young to get a job. My friend's older sister was planning to go to cosmetology school to become a hairstylist and asked if anyone wanted a haircut. I jumped at the chance to get a more sophisticated look from the cool older sister. My long hair was all one length, but I wanted bangs and layers like Farrah Fawcett—layers were totally cool.
Well, this girl had NO idea how to cut hair. I got kinda sorta straight bangs across my forehead, and ONE chunky layer across the back halfway up my head. She realized she shouldn't be cutting anyone's hair and left me like that. When I went home my mom took pity on me and brought me to a real hairdresser and I ended up with a dorky short bob to be able to salvage the mess. —whyonearth
Sad Girl Crying in the Corner at the Club™, American-Abroad Edition
It was over 20 years ago, I was 17 and spending the summer with my mom in the small German town where she was from. She frequently ditched me to go hang out with her childhood friends who didn't speak English well, and she never taught me German, so I was on my own most of the time.
I met two guys, ages 18-19, and spent the rest of the summer doing lazy teenage stuff with them and their nebulous group of friends and girlfriends. Their English was passable, and we spent a lot of time together, but I honestly can't remember what we talked about. My clearest memory is of them singing the Khia song, "My Neck, My Back"—which played on the radio with the fully explicit lyrics—in their thickly accented Germ-English while we drove around in one of their BMWs.
As my departure date approached, the group decided to take me to a club that didn't ID. You have to be 18 to drink liquor and I was only 17. The club gave each patron this punch card, and every time you ordered a drink they punched your card. When it was time to leave, you'd put your card through a scanner machine, it would tell you how much you owe, and a turnstile gate (like in the subway) would allow you to leave after paying with cash in the machine, or via a credit card with an employee standing guard. None of this was explained to me ahead of time.
We had a great time drinking, dancing, practicing our languages on each other (eight weeks in and my teenage dirtbag street German got a lot of laughs), and maybe a little bit of making out with the one hot guy I'd been eyeing all summer.
When it came time to leave, I put my punchcard in the machine and it read 385€!!!! In early-aughts money!!!! It turns out, some of the nebulous hangers-on had been telling the bartenders to put their drinks on my punch card. I had maybe 80€ cash on me, and no credit card. The guys I was with had already paid and tried to pony up to cover the rest, but we were still short almost 100€. I was VERY intoxicated, didn't have a cell phone, and didn't know what to do—but the bouncer, manager, and server who were now hovering around me demanding the money wouldn't let me leave.
The guy I'd been smooching had the brilliant idea to drive to my great-grandmother's house where I'd been staying with my mom, wake my mom up, and get her to ride with him back to this club 20 minutes away. I had almost an hour to sober up between sobbing fits to practice my excuses. Most of the group had left by this point, so I was the Sad Girl Crying in the Corner at the Club™, American-abroad edition.
My mom and the hot guy arrived and her expression immediately changed from red-hot anger to laughter. She laughed AT my sorry state, paid the rest of the tab, and asked me if I learned anything. The hot guy drove us both back home where my great-grandmother had left coffee and cake on the stove for me. We left a few days later and no one ever spoke of it again.
...Until two weeks ago when I went back to that German town for the first time since this incident, without my mom, and told this story to my cousin. Apparently the hot guy still lives there and coaches my cousin's wife's volleyball league. He offered to reach out to him and I said I'd die of embarrassment and would rather this live in the past. Should I have let him reach out to the guy??—Seabassy
