Chatting with Allie's eight-year old, I told her what the coming years were going to be like for her. Is anyone else going to tell her that boys will be cruel but eminently malleable idiots? Maybe, but it's doubtful they'd give such practical advice.
"Act like you like them for a day. Just the one day. They'll be buying you stuff for a year."
My god, I'd make a good dad, I thought. All this accumulated wisdom going unused is just tragic.
Alas. It's unlikely that I'll ever have kids, especially on purpose. For this reason, I now commit to the ages the advice I would give the daughter I'll probably never have:
- Right now you think your parents are the smartest people on earth, but
that will change. Soon we will seem like the dumbest, and we will say things
like "I hate the teen years! I can't wait for this to be over!" But it's
never over. Until we die, we will remain the dumbest people you know.
- Your parents presently obsess about whether anything we do for you is
adequate. Our parental guilt manifests in presents and trips and pets. Milk
it. The minute you become a pre-teen, we will consider feeding you to
be self-defeating.
- Around 11, you may notice that everyone hates you. This will include
your parents, your teachers, complete strangers, the long-deceased, and
especially your closest girlfriends. We did not all change. You did. But you
will grow out of it. And if you don't, blowing out the candles on your 18th
birthday cake will be your last memory of family, so savor it.
- If you find yourself beginning a sentence with "What does it mean when
he," just stop. In fact, slap yourself hard. Whatever it is, it means
nothing. The single biggest problem women have in relationships is their
assumption that men are as complicated as women. Men are not. We are
relative primitives. We are wired more like animals than like women. Do you
ask yourself about the layers of meaning beneath what your dog is doing? No.
That would be ridiculous. So you know how you're wondering if a guy is thinking
about you? About whether there's subtext in his saying he likes a particular
song? About whether he's thinking about calling, but maybe he's just too
shy? No, no, and no. He's not. He's thinking about sex, or a sandwich, or
whatever happened within the last 10 minutes. Stop burning calories
psychoanalyzing paramecia.
- You know how you can grow to be attracted to a guy? It doesn't work the
other way. Guys know whether they'll ever be attracted to a woman within 10
seconds of meeting her. So if you like a guy, laugh at his stupid joke and
touch his arm. If he likes you back, his hormones will take over from there.
If they don't, just move on. This is infallible.
- Never put yourself in a position where you're dependent on a man. Ever.
No one will treat you worse than a man who knows you have no other options.
- Never put yourself in a position where a man can be dependent on you.
Ever. Although the option to mooch off their woman's income is fairly new to
men, we took to it like a dog takes to a pile of deer shit. Once a man's
motivation switch is thrown to Off, it takes a superhuman amount of torque
to set it back to On.
- Dating is test-driving. He's on his best behavior, so the slightest
douchebaggery should set off alarms. Whatever annoys you when you're dating,
you're going to get in spades when you're married.
- There is a time and a place for sleeping around. That time and place is
college. If you do it during high school, you'll just damage yourself. If
you do it during your career, you'll just damage your career. But whatever
happens in college stays in college. Go nuts. Just use condoms and, most
especially, never tell me about it.
- Men under the age of 28 are categorically worthless and maldeveloped. Do
not try to redeem them, and never marry one. We take a while to catch up to
women, and frankly, many of us never do.
- Do not date fire fighters. Whatever sweet nothings he may whisper, that
is an incorrigibly misogynistic, cheating, booty-call culture.
- I will hate your boyfriends. Despite the comforting things people will
tell you, this is not because I think these guys aren't good enough for you.
I'm amazed that anyone wants to have sex with you, frankly. No, I
will hate your boyfriend because he makes me superfluous. You will call him
and not me when your car breaks down, or when you're thrown in jail for
punching a creepy older guy in a bar, and I will never forgive him for my
obsolescence.
Way to deck the creep, by the way. That's ma girl.
- If you ever have a kid, please endlessly post photos of it on your
Facebook wall, but only after friending all of my parent friends.
- The easiest way to ruin your life is to get pregnant accidentally. Not coincidentally, this is the easiest way to ruin your kid's life, too. Birth control is to dating what bungee-cords are to bungee-jumping.