I use to insist on eating fish with two forks. I still hate salt shakers, but I’ve learned not mention it most of the time.
Are you making a joke that I don’t get or are two fork fish eating and eschewing salt shakers highfalutin type things to do?
Yeah, I’ve never owned a motorcycle, but I once had a very nice biker jacket. My son was with me when I took the jacket in to have a minor repair done on it. He was in first grade at the time.
He looked around the store and marveled at all the leather. A saleslady came up and said to him, “you know, we have a few in your size”. Man, what a rude trick.
We walked out of the store with a leather motorcycle jacket that fit him for a little under a year.
I was too busy being self-absorbed to care about being pretentious.
For a time, during the pretentious graduate school years, I wore obnoxious t-shirts to portray my disdain for “the establishment”. After Bush won re-election in '04, I paraded around my classes with a shirt that said “Stupidity causes cancer.” Another favorite said “Freedom is a myth.” I also used to play angry rock in my car (like Rage Against the Machine or System of a Down) really, really loud, with the windows down, just daring somebody to notice. I was brooding and deep, all right; and a tool.
I cross my 7s still, because I like how it looks. My pretension was to write the dates in the European fashion (day/month/year). Crossed 7s don’t impede communication. European system where it’s not expected, just to look fancy, does. I dropped that posthaste. 
I also still cross my Zs and 7s. It was something I consciously copied from my French teacher in middle school, so I guess it is a little pretentious. I have adopted a few other willful quirks of orthography and penmanship, too.
Pretentious? Moi?
Hey, Tool are still awesome. Never got into RAtM, though.
I used to be a music snob. I scoffed at anything that wasn’t mixed meter, had less than 4 sharps or flats in the key signature, or didn’t have a synthesizer.
Nowadays, I get a little queasy whenever I hear prog music. I used to like that???
Within a fortnight, perhaps?
I too crossed my sevens when I was in junior high, just like my older, sophisticated cousin did. Looking back I think she was probably pretty darned pretentious herself. She just happened to grow up in West Hollywood where it’s almost a prerequisite. I still cross my Zs, though I don’t know how pretentious it is, seeing as no one ever sees my printing. I’ve done it since I was little when my mom taught me to do crossword puzzles. It just felt . . . right.
I also used to smoke cloves, and I actually liked them. Which is not to say there wasn’t a pretentious aspect to it. I was after all smoking them in the girls bathroom, making sure to french inhale the whole time :smack: I also use(d) a cigarette case (I rarely smoke anymore, and almost never in public) because ya know, classy, and also, I didn’t want everyone to know I was smoking generics :p.
I suppose some of the weird get ups I used to wear could be seen as pretentious and I dress a bit fancier than the other women at work, so I’m sure there’s been some talk behind my back. Nothing funny like the stories you’ve all been sharing; you’re seriously cracking my up.
This description is perfect. I try not to have many regrets but I sometimes get a case of the douche chills when thinking back on my life.
Physics major, here. We learn to do that so that people can read our equations with less confusion. Some of us put a little uptick on our Xs, too, so they don’t look like multiply signs, or some other mathematical symbol. I haven’t done any real physics in decades, but the practice stuck. I’d have to try really hard to undo it, and that would be rather… pretentious, no?
Mais oui.
I quite liked clove cigarettes, too: they were like smoking Christmas cake. That was no excuse for the fountain pen, though.
The use of fish knives and forks came into fashion in the Victorian era. Prior to that when fish was served anyone who could afford silverware ate fish using two forks. Some very old money families (of whom I first encountered the practice) continue to do so under the banner of "we bought the family silver prior to such nouveau riche inventions). As for as the salt shakers go, even comedy books like the old Preppy Handbook, maintain, the adage that salt belongs in a dish. (Unless your great-grandparents traveled a lot in pre-communist Eastern Europe and you are lucky enough to have inherited a salt throne).
Interesting; thank you. So, one would sprinkle the salt as we do sugar? Not sure how you’d use to forks.
I wore (hand-me-down) dress pants and corduroys throughout grade school and middle school because that’s what we had.
You would have gotten my attention, I always thought girls as you described were very hot.