“You know how when you’re a kid, the boundaries of your world are quite small? One day, I decided I would play one street further over than I normally did, discovering a whole new crew of kids who I played with throughout that summer. Though, for some reason that still eludes me, I told them that, far from being Lee from Uxbridge, I was Hans from Berlin. Yes, I put on a ludicrous German accent the whole time, claiming I was over for the holidays visiting relatives.

I knew things had gone too far when I went back to the kids’ house to meet their mother. I had to keep up the pretence, answering questions about where I was from and what I thought of England. The mother, being sweet-natured, was good enough to not piss herself laughing there and then, and I was able to continue the pointlessness.

Things only ended when I went to secondary school that September and found, to my horror, that my friends were there too.
“You’re…. not German?”
“Um no. That was just a joke.”

I didn’t see them again after that.”

(thanks to Lee)