In sober mood, Ross O'Carroll Kelly looks back on his almost successful Leaving Cert, and some of the surprises that helped to make the day for him
The day I got my Leaving Cert results was a day full of surprises - I got served in, like, three different boozers without having to produce my fake ID and I discovered that nine pints of Ken, on top of seven or eight Bacordi Breezers, seriously lowers my standards when it comes to, like, birds of the opposite sex?
Believe it not, roysh, I actually did a pretty poor Leaving, which was no surprise given that I never once turned up for history class, for instance, and the one time I went in for Ort, the teacher called the headmaster's office, thinking I was someone from, like, Clongowes or Blackrock who'd just turned up to rip the piss.
The English paper was like, "Gloucester's sons are far more interesting than the King's daughters. Discuss this view, supporting your answer by quotation from or reference to the play."
It turns out the play they were talking about was King Lear, which, funnily enough, was what a bunch of Mounties christened me, roysh, that time when they had to use our hockey pitch and they caught me checking them out through the window of the changing rooms.
I just, like, wrote down my exam number, ruled my page and copied down the question, which by some miracle or other managed to earn me, like, an F. If I'd copied down the questions about Lord of the Flies and some of those poems I might even have passed.
Of course results day is no time to be having regrets about what you might or might not have done. For me it was nul points all the way, if you pordon the French.
Of course in the social circles I move in, roysh, it's not how many points you get in your Leaving that matters, it's how many points you get in the schools cup final.
I actually kicked 12, which, while not enough to get me into Veterinary Science in Trinity or International Commerce with French in UCD, was enough to get me hooked up with a scad of birds from Alex and Loreto Foxrock.
And that was just the first round of offers.
Of course I was still living off my schools cup fame when the results came out that summer. I got, like, all No Grades except for my F in English, which I always felt was my strongest subject. JP talked me out of appealing, saying it was a "lose-lose" situation and urging me to take an "elevation view of the SOP," which I took to mean that the only thing that could come out of it was that I'd lose the F that I worked so hord for.
And after that me and goys hit the battle cruiser to get reacquainted with our great mates - Ken and Prob - and, as the ad says, we all ended up seeing a good night wasted.
All night long, roysh, birds were coming up to me, giving it, "How'd you do?" and I just, like, shook my head and went, "Doesn't look like I'm going to get dentistry. I was SO DAMN CLOSE!" and after seven or eight Oh My Gods they'd try to take advantage of my obvious grief-stricken state by throwing the lips on me.
And I wasn't exactly fighting them off.
I remember the next morning, roysh, waking up with a hangover so big I needed planning permission for it, and the usual two or three traffic cones scattered around the place. It turns out I ended up in, like, Fionn's gaff.
Of course, Mr Brainiac was already up and on the computer, checking out his career options on the old World Wild Whatever-the-fock-it's-called. He didn't score once the night before, roysh, which is why he's now trying to make me feel bad by passing himself off as some kind of, like, Einsteen, if that's the roysh word.
He's going, "You know, with my A1 in physics and, well, every other subject I sat, I could actually think about doing astrophysics," and quick as a flash, roysh, I'm like, "Astrophysics? I mean, it's HORDLY focking rocket science, is it?"
• Ross O'Carroll-Kelly's column appears every weekend in The Sunday Tribune