Vickiepedia

I was pretty sure “What do you do during the weekends?” was what Examiner 1 asked. That’s one of the standard questions for that oral exam; pretty much free marks for grabs. I can’t say I was very well-prepared because I had a 1,000-word individual assignment plus a 12,000-word group assignment due the same day with 5 other classmates, in which only 3.5 of them were really active. But still. Weekends? I often play sports with my friends and practice the violin, among other things. Of course I’d study a lot if there’s an upcoming test. Then Examiner 1 would likely follow up and ask what sports I’m into. I would answer swimming and tennis. I prefer swimming because I don’t really like to sweat.

“What do you do during the weekends?”
“I often play video games alone.”

No, Vickie! Sports, friends, violin, study, swimming, tennis, sweat… remember?

“I, uh, often play video games…?”

Examiner 1 shot me an “are you for real” look.
Examiner 2 giggled.

Which is no biggie and just a language / preparation fail if I wasn’t telling the truth.

But I was. The actual things I do during all my weekends. Video games. Alone.

FML.

Hmm, how do you put it into words? Pwned by a noob fail? Piano falls on head fail? Arrow to crotch fail? Already paid last month’s rent but the landlord forgot to mark it down and thought you were super late because you have a history of paying rent late fail?

Vickie, stop thinking you can just get out there unprepared and without sleep and still pull a passable presentation. You’ve embarrassed yourself in front of the whole fucking class! You phail! Now GTFO!

Embarrassing events (which all happened to be language-related) of Vickie in descending order, less embarrassing first.

(5) I once mispronounced “pretentious” as pre-TEN-tee-ous instead of pre-TEN-cious when I was angry. What sound argument. </sarcasm>

(4) When some of my ex-classmates asked what “plagiarism” meant and how it was pronounced, and in order to prove to them that the English pronunciation was really easy, I broke the syllables into play-gee-AIR-rism by mistake, when I knew the word should be pronounced as PLAY-jar-rism. I sincerely hope that they’ve completely forgotten that word now.

(3) I once said clutches when I meant crutches. “Clutches?” “Yes, clutches.” In a formal presentation.

(2) I never knew lasagne was not pronounced as la-SAHG-na, until I said it out loud in front of 3 friends. Now I can’t eat lasagne without remembering that event and blushing.

(1) When I came out to an old friend (oh that was ages ago), she asked whether I’d come out to my parents as well. I didn’t know what “come out” meant back then and replied, “Yeh, we’d probably dine out.”

Unrelated to languages; but if my parents somehow discover Trusty #1 and Trusty #3 among my luggage later, that would so top the list…

Guess what I did last night?

Yep, I had fun with trusty vibrator #2 again. (For your information, it’s my most favourite sex toy, so it shouldn’t surprise you that it’s mentioned all over the place.)

And of course, you guessed the rest of the story. I was too tired to put trusty vibrator #2 away after the mind-blowing orgasm, and completely forgot about it in the morning. My maid made my bed and must have known that I masturbated blah blah blah.

But there’s more to it this time.

This time my brother caught me forgetting to hide it…

Well, actually, trusty vibrator #2 doesn’t look too much like a sex toy anyway, so you might think that there isn’t much to worry about.

Not if my brother picked it up and asked what it was, then without a satisfying (no pun intended) answer, switched it on and saw it all vibrating and stuff.

Good god, why don’t I ever learn to tidy up after I use something?