About the author: Echo Freer
The three most cringe-worthy things that have happened to me!
When I was 16 some of the girls from school were going to a dance and I pleaded with my parents to let me go. I asked what the others were going to wear and was told, 'Oh just a long skirt or something like that.' So my mum made me a long black skirt with a cummerbund (a wide belt that people wear on very formal occasions) and bought me a white pin-tuck blouse. I looked like an Edwardian debutante and I felt so proud - until I got to the dance! What a nightmare! Everyone else was wearing scruffy skirts, kaftans, love-beads and head bands. I wanted to die. I'd been so wrapped up in my swimming, it had totally escaped me that we were at the height of the hippy movement. I threw away my cummerbund and sat in the corner until it was time to go home.
When I was 17, I went to a village dance and came out of the toilets with my skirt tucked into the back of my tights. Everyone, including the guy I really fancied, could see my knickers!
When I was 14, I was talking to this really gorgeous boy at the National Swimming Championships and I pulled my tracksuit top out of my bag but all my tampons flew out with it - all over the floor in front of him!