Kate Hackett
Man, if my middle school bedroom walls could talk…
I had some pretty ridiculous phases that I remain too shamed to speak of publicly, so you’ll never pry those secrets out of me. But these folks we rounded up never, uh. Outgrew their phases. We rounded up some hilarious tales from Reddit about peoples’ most classic “This was not a phase, ma” stories and … well. Get ready for cringe.
1. Never dyed again
When I was 16, I kept my hair dyed blue, and kept myself fairly busy earning money to keep buying the hair dye so it would stay that way. One summer, one of our cats, a gray and white one, had to have a leg amputated after being bitten by a snake, and I noticed that the skin beneath the fur was the same color, in the same pattern, as her fur had been.
And it was just enough to pass dumb teenage muster.
So, I shaved my head with the intention of getting my entire scalp tattooed blue, thinking that when my hair grew back in, it would be forever blue. I even found a tattoo guy willing to do the job, but only if an experimental square inch worked.
I’m still blonde, but I do have a tattoo on my scalp that’s just a blue square.
My mother was too dumbfounded to say anything. And my stepdad just walked out onto the back porch to stare into the yard for a while. It was never brought up again once it was clear the experiment didn’t work.
I never dyed my hair again after that either.
2. Poetry
I went through a poet phase, and I gave a girl I liked a binder of all my poetry (bad one) and plays (worse than the poetry) called ‘The Complete Works”. Last year she emails me out of the blue (22 years later) for my address because she found my cringe book when she was moving and wanted to mail it back to me. I now have my entire catalog of lost self-indulgent regrettable phase creations back in my possession.
3. Wheeljack
I was VERY into The Transformers when I was a wee lad in the 1980s. One day, I decided to change my name to the name of my favorite ”Autobot”. My name was lame, and I wanted an awesome Transformer name. And I was VERY insistent that my parents only call me by my new name. Calling me by my ‘old’ name would cause a big fat tantrum on my part. So for the better part of a week, my poor parents had to call me ”Wheeljack”.
4. A cartoon!
I thought I was setting a new fashion by buying multiple copies of the same clothes. I always looked the same, just like cartoon characters! Jeans, an open black button-down short-sleeved shirt over a t-shirt, and a giant floppy white sunhat. Combined with my long hair, I’d have made at least a passably dressed girl if not for the fact that I was, in fact, male. I still find black button-down shirts in old boxes…
deleted
5. Bad watches
When I was a teenager (early 00s), I was waiting for my mother to pick me up and was wearing one of those really bad sports wristwatches. It was itching me so I took it off for a second, but then she arrived and because I was struggling to get it back on my wrist, I looped it around the equally bad chain I had around my neck in a rush to get out of the door.
My mom asked me about it in the car, and I told her this was my new style and I planned to wear it like that every day. She rolled her eyes.
I wore that watch on a chain around my neck every single day for 3 years or so. There are even professional family photos where I’m wearing it because I refused to take it off.
One day, the chain broke and I lost the watch. I was in high school at that point anyway and it was a major lady repellent, so… phase over.
6. Neo
Early 2000’s. I had a trench-coat phase after I saw The Matrix. Turns out a goofy 13-year-old doesn’t look or feel as bad*ss in one as Neo does.
7. Super religious
I became extremely religious in my late teen years. Planned on being a missionary to FARC in Columbia kind of extreme. My mother tried to tell me that I might feel differently in the future and to be careful. I screamed that, if anything, I wanted to be MORE extreme. I run a liquor store now and she is kind enough not to rub my face in it. I think she’s mostly glad I’m not doing my “passion”.
8. Goth
“Mom, I’m a Goth now”… said the tubby, 13-year-old girl. I think she didn’t stop laughing for the whole 6 years I wore all black. My whole family found it [funny]!
9. Witchery!
I was obsessed with “The Craft” in junior high and was convinced that I was a witch. I basically just drew pentagrams all over my school work and wore a lot of rings on my fingers. That’s it.
10. Get out.
Oh god… I was a fedora guy once. I hate myself so much for it.
11. Tortured SOUL
In my junior year of high school, I went through a “[tormented] writer/poet” phase where I had an emo look and wrote terrible poetry that I posted on my Xanga.
12. Trains
I used to be really really into trains. It was shamefully and sadly a very expensive phase that lasted about 8 years. Now I’m over it, but stuck with model trains that cost $50-2,000 a piece and I can’t sell them. Ouch.
13. 0 Regrets
My scene phase. Huge hair, 100 silly bands and bracelets. So much eyeliner, so much. [Wild] music. But I actually don’t regret it.
14. Born in the wrong time
That phase where I worshiped 1970s/1980s music and refused to listen to anything else. “I was born in the wrong generation” etc…
