Truth or Dare

Remember the days of primary school, and you'd play truth or dare? I hated that game. Mostly because I was a chicken and not prepared to do half the 'dares' the group dished out. The secrets bit was easy as pie. Pick someone reasonably popular, but slightly left field. Say you have a crush on them. In the event the bitches actually tell him, it can be easily passed off as a) a lie or b) old news, and you now like someone else.

The worst dare I ever received was to sing in front of a group. I don't know why, but I am petrified of singing in front of a crowd. My throat literally closes over and I feel faint. I begged and begged to previous dare - run around the house in your underwear - but they knew me and I wasn't able to get out of it. I warbled into my chest a pathetic version of a Matchbox Twenty song (after a lot of coaxing), before going into the bathroom and willed away the feeling of embarrassment. For years afterwards I felt mortified every time I thought of it.

I can bet you $100 that the group I was with do not even remember it. Actually, they probably do not even remember me, as I was a ring in - friends with the birthday girl but went to a completely different school. I was the odd one out - they'd reached the 'smoking stage' many seem to aspire to in high school whereas I had not. The girls used to hide their cigarettes in connector pens with the ink pulled out. Nearly everyone had these in their bags and you could almost carry around an entire pack of smokes without anyone realising.

Once, at a school camp in year 9 (I think I was 15) a group of kids gathered around the fire for a game of truth or dare. Even the god fearing 'good girls' who everyone usually avoided. I spent the whole time reading on my bed, hiding whenever someone came looking for me (I later claimed I had showered and slept because of a migraine to avoid prosecution). At age 15, most dares revolve around kissing, which I was not prepared to do. I had only been involved with a couple of boyfriends but the thought of kissing a random made my skin crawl. It wouldn't have been to bad, except the god fearing good girls all joined in and even participated on a girl-on-girl peck on the lips. Talk about feeling like a dork.