The following is a compilation of fun little tid-bits I’ve learned over the past twenty-some-odd years. Feel free to add your own contributions as comments…
Mind Your Manners
Don’t chew with your mouth open. Be considerate of those around you. Nobody likes a selfish twat.
Perks
If you become a regular at your favorite sushi joint, the chefs will remember you and hook you up. It helps to be gracious and tip well.
Fuck Tha Po-leece
Cops will terrorize you if you have out-of-state plates. Either give in and re-register your car or be prepared to see nothing but po-po in your rearview.
The Bad-Boy Conundrum
Girls fall for assholes because it is often the so-called bad-boys who go through puberty early and/or have more testosterone than your average Joe. Girls unwittingly pick up the scent, so to speak, and are all but powerless to resist these walking, talking hard-ons. When a bad-boy sees the effect he has on women, his kid-in-a-candy-store instincts kick in and he acts accordingly. Nice guys DO finish last because they are often late-bloomers and emit less testosterone fumes than their bad-boy counterparts, tainting them with a demeanor that one might label “pussy bitch”. I don’t know a single girl out there who has ever creamed her pants over a pussy bitch. Once everyone’s hormones regulate, bad-boys typically mellow out, pussy bitches step up their game, and girls cease to be able to tell the difference between the two (and finally begin to MEAN IT when they claim to want a nice guy), bringing more equality to the playing field.
Goddamn Geniuses
Advances in science and technology are responsible for destroying the world. “It’s not guns who kill people, it’s PEOPLE who kill people,” you might counter smugly. Fine, but take away science and technology and anyone who wants to solve an argument with violence has to use their own two fists, NOT a nuclear fucking bomb that could wipe out our whole planet.
Row Your Own Boat
Some people will say anything to get what they want. Everyone has an agenda, whether it’s to get into your pants, advance their career, or own your soul. Trust your stomach, not your heart.
Secret Anguish = Diarrhea
When the mind suffers, the body weeps. Chronic pain or discomfort of any kind is often linked to emotional duress. Our physical and mental aspects are inextricably connected, and until you learn to face what’s weighing on your melon, you’ll be plagued by any number of ailments that will continue to disrupt your life and demand your attention.
Body of Gas
Everyone farts. Yes, even (or maybe especially) that super-hot girl or guy you can’t stop thinking about. Get over it.
The Grass Is Greener, But FUCK, It’s Cold
The “perfect place to live” does not exist. I realized this after moving away from my native California for awhile, fed up with the phony, fake people, packed freeways, and lack of seasons. Living elsewhere taught me that: “real” people are pointless if their realness involves in-your-face misery and blatant disregard for manners or personal appearance; empty country roads that go on forever are boring and often dangerous, due to patchy cell phone service, miles between towns and/or exits, and no street lamps; I would rather it be sunny every fucking day without interruption than subject myself to six months of winter, a la Vermont. Imagine a cat being hurled into a bathtub full of icy water and you’ll come close to picturing what I looked like in sub-zero temperatures. Basically, every place in the world has its perks and shortcomings. It’s important to figure out what you can and CAN’T tolerate before buying a home in Bumfuck, Middle of Nowhere that you’ll be stuck with for ten years prior to duping some other poor shmuck into taking it off your freezing hands. Or whatever the case may be.
Cupid Is Allergic To E-Harmony
Most clichés are clichés for a reason. My favorite: you can’t go looking for Love, Love finds YOU. So true, which is one of the many reasons I despise the notion of internet dating. You are fucking yourself over just by creating a profile. (Every marriage and/or relationship resulting from online matchmaking crashes and burns within five years.) Suck it up and find a way to genuinely enjoy being lonely for a while instead of feeding into the idea that you’re defective if you don’t have a significant other. Become whole as an individual prior to adding someone else to the equation. Then and only then will you attract another healthy, worthy mate.
Toddler Knows Best
When I look back on the activities I gravitated toward as a child, I am fascinated by how glaringly obvious my destiny was. Reading, writing, singing, drawing…I loved to create and found artistic ways to express myself. Other obligations side-tracked me as I grew up, but I always found my way back to those things I loved…or perhaps, they found ME and helped clear the fog. I find it ironic that teachers and parents tell us to follow our dreams and yet, many of us are funneled into boring worker-bee fates that deviate from who we innately are and always have been. How tragic! Remember who you were in your formative years: would that child be elated that you dared to pursue the dreams you were born with, or devastated by the cage you’ve complacently crawled into?
I Wipe My Own Ass
I always thought there’d be this big, obvious moment when I became a “grown-up”. It has since dawned on me that the process of becoming an adult isn’t over until you die. We are constantly learning lessons and growing as people, striving to evolve into who we want to be when we grow-up. That being said, it is crucial to know how to take care of yourself, preferably as soon as possible. Yes, we all need friends and family and our various support systems, but despite the best intentions of our loved ones, they won’t always be able to be there for us. Make sure you can pay your bills, put food in the fridge, and maintain your overall health and well-being. Beyond that, there’s room for trial and error.
You Fucked Up My Life
Granted, some parents and many step-parents are monsters and should be slowly tortured and mutilated for the hell they put their innocent children through; however, most parents have very good intentions and fuck up merely due to human error. As kids, we often put our parents on pedestals built for gods, and my, how far they fall throughout the years. If you’re fortunate, your folks will apologize for the mistakes they made at your expense and do everything in their power to make it up to you; if you’re less fortunate, your parents are self-righteous pricks who claim no blame and offer no closure on painful situations. In either case, you are responsible for yourself and your own actions as a person in society. Forgive them, or at least reach acceptance, and then move on.
BFFN: Best Friends For Now
There are some people who you will want to be friends with forever, no matter how far your paths veer away from one another’s; then there are those “other” friends. You attain them during certain phases and enjoy them immensely. When you move onto the next chapter of your life, however, you find that they just don’t fit in to the picture. Maybe they can’t relate to you or vice versa and you no longer have anything to talk about, or maybe they lead a destructive lifestyle and you’re trying to get your shit together…it happens. The worst thing you can do is attempt to force the bond nonetheless, whether out of guilt or sentimentality. Gracefully allow yourselves to drift further and further apart, and leave the good times that you shared in your memory bank while deleting their number from your contact list. No hard feelings.
Know-It-All, Know-It-None
Short of trying bestiality, always keep an open mind. When you’re feeling stuck, listening to someone else’s perspective can give you a whole new slant on a situation, providing a view that you may never have stumbled upon all on your own. Whether you are fifteen or fifty, death occurs when you stop learning new stuff. The well of knowledge available to us is bottomless and forever shape-shifting, which makes life infinitely interesting: just when I think I have all the answers, I realize that I don’t know jack shit.
Author: Britt Warner
