Being a teenager was, is and always will be a time adults look back on and shudder. The two set menu haircuts that you were allowed to sport (The Bowl and The Curtains), giggling every time you saw someone with a Head gym bag and every interaction with the opposite sex. From the time that first hair springs up ‘’down there’’ like a beacon of adulthood you begin to view girls not as non-descript entities that are only good for pushing in the mud to get a few cheap laughs off your mates, but as sexual deities, whom if you’re within a miles radius of your motor functions crumble away like a biscuits in a whirlwind. How on earth would one begin to be seen as attractive to such creatures? Then you turn on the TV, hoping Mike and Angelo will alleviate the crippling anxiety in the world of darkness you have come to inhabit, when the answer appears, a ray of hope; Lynx deodorant. In no uncertain terms the advert states ‘’If you use this deodorant, girls will have sex with you’’. There it is then. So off to the shops me, and many of my peers went. The queues at Boots full of greasy adolescents with a can of Lynx in one hand and a pack of extra large Condoms in the other (It was a time of ambition you see). The next day there was a renewed sense of purpose in you; the sun shone brighter, birds sang louder and that bowl of Honey Nut Grahams tasted like a Unicorn’s elbow. Nearly at the classroom door and prepare yourself to burst through with an exuberance that you usually wouldn’t for fully justified fears you would be pummelled into the ground with a hardback copy of Catcher In The Rye before you knew what an error you had made. The moment arrives; the door swings open and instead of an onslaught of knickers and training bras burying you in a majestic cotton and wire avalanche there’s simply the shrill squawk by Kelly Richardson at the back of the class; ‘’Fuckin’ ‘ell, d’you shower with the piss of a thousand rats?’’(I can’t be sure if that’s the exact quote, it could well have been ‘’you smell like a Yak’s STD’’, ‘’Did someone just fill a corpse with Um Bongo?’’ or even just screaming ‘’GENOCIDE!!!’’ in my face then jumping out of the window). I withdrew from my brief excursion into the realm of bravado and I crawled back onto my familiar and comforting bubble of melancholy and self loathing. It was a while before I reached for the cold, canister of torment once again but desperate times call for foul, piss smelling aerosols. Desperation’s name was Kirsty (Surnames have been withdrawn to protect anonymity). I was understandably rattled by my first flirtation Lynx so I began to think maybe I didn’t use it correctly and a better approach could be to spray the GIRL with it. I don’t quite recall the whole affair but there was a point where Kirsty was pinned to the floor, I was spaying aerosol straight in her face like it was a can of Bear Mace and I was Dog The Bounty Hunter, screaming ‘’Love me, LOVE ME!!’’ through a wall of tears while members of the public tried desperately to pull us apart. Some would attribute that to error on my part. It is possible that the lack of female attention I receive is because of my substantial personal issues and social retardation, and not a problem brought on by fragrance in an aluminium cylinder…no, that’s ridiculous. Now, I’ve given Lynx more than enough chances to redeem itself but like a battered wife I keep going back, lying to the neighbours about my bruises, ‘’It was a door honest, canvas and slippers don’t mix, Ha ha ha’’ Well canvas and slippers do mix and Lynx is shit! Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I had The Curtains.