5th wheel

A Story by Sromag

In the style of Diary of a wimpy kid, a book aimed at adults - mostly those who like books like diary of a wimpy kid.

As I sit here writing my memoirs, I am reminded of all the different chapters of my life.

A couple of the many chapters that stick out in my mind are my school college years.

My friends from secondary school were some of the best I ever had. The fun we had, the struggles and the scrapes we got ourselves into made out school years not only survivable, but pleasurable.

I was friends with Chris, Tom and Mike right the way through secondary school. My mum used to call us the 4 musketeers. We did everything together IN school and would meet up most weekends.

None of us ever had a girlfriend through school either. We were too cool for that. All the groups of boys wanted to be like us, except for the HARD kids. These were the kids who got into fights and were in the bottom set for everything.

Out of my friends, Chris was my best friend at the time. We used to hang out together, even without the others.

He was probably the only one I could fully be myself around.

It was quite a new experience having someone know me almost as well as my mum did.

Not only did he understand my antics, he used to join in with them so at least I knew I wasn’t weird.

Or maybe, Chris was just as weird.

He was also a bit sharper than the rest of us. Maybe because he seemed to grow up a little bit quicker than the rest of us.

He grew armpit hairs before we did which made everyone really curious. “do they not tickle?” was the most common question.

He also had some bum fluff on his chin and his voice had broken a couple of years early.

All the girls liked that. They said he sounded like a white Barry White.

At the cinema, Mike, Tom and I used to get checked for ID. Despite having a fake ID, Chris didn't.

The rest of us could only feign deeper voices and try to act the part by looking uninterested in things and getting shirty when we were questioned about our age - if we were quick witted enough.

Luckily, these were still the times when we could get away with faking our age by lying about our date of birth.

In the end, what the rest of us really needed was a fake ID. Chris, being the resourceful one, bought his from Mr Rashid, the owner of the corner shop.

His name on it was actually Padungi Mashiba and he was 27.

I thought it might be suspicious, but given the ID said he was 27 and NOT just 18 - AND on top of that, he had some bum fluff, no chance. It was perfect.

What WAS suspicious about his ID though was that it was a library card with a badly sellotaped photo on it and a beard drawn on with a blue biro.

When he got it, it was a momentous occasion for us. We could now buy bottles of alcohol and not be worried about being rejected at the counter.

In the end there wasn’t really much point in getting a fake ID to buy alcohol.

We only ever used to buy alcohol from Mr Rashid who gave Chris the fake ID in the first place.

On top of that, I never understood why people liked to drink alcohol anyway. It tasted GROSS - not that we’d ever admit it to each other.

It took a long time to realise that I don’t think many people actually LIKE the tase of alcohol. They do it to be social and people just build a tolerance to it rather than actually enjoying it like - say - a glass of orange juice.

They also say alcohol stunts growth but most of us TACMs by our final year of school were nearly 6 feet tall by the age of 16 so it didn’t really bother us. I didn’t want to grow to be 7 feet tall so I kind of forced myself to drink.

I didn’t like it but I did it because my friends did. Although getting drunk in the middle of the day was never a good idea.

It usually led to problems.

As it turned out. Getting arrested when you’re under the age of 18 isn’t as bad as people make out.

Mike’s parents used to let him drink wine with his dinner in the evening so it was nothing new to him.

He said it was normal for his heritage. He kept saying he was Italian but the only link we discovered was that his great grandparents had a dog called Luigi.

Secondary school was about finding what we might actually enjoy, experiencing new things without parents, sweating profusely and getting erections in the most inappropriate places.

Sromag · Nov 29, 2025 at 9:36 PM">

It was also about building long lasting friendships as we hung out with each together at weekends.

© 2025 Sromag

Author's Note

This is just the first few pages....
This might appeal to people who like books like Diary of a wimpy kid.
Crappy diagrams are deliberate - they are not for people to wow over the images but just to enhance the sentiments written in the text.
Aimed at adults more than kids.