“U want to be writer. Coast Guard better fit than the Navy. Stay away from girl named [redacted] in Savannah GA. Have [redacted] surgery now.”
For the writer bit, I didn’t figure out that’s what I wanted to do until I was 27 and out of the Navy. I didn’t hate the Navy, but I think I would have enjoyed the CG more.
Yeah, me too. Vague life advice will probably just be ignored anyway. Maybe I should stop thinking about the man my 16 year old self will become, and just try to save the little snot from his own stupid in a more immediate sense.
“When asked if you’re a virgin, just admit it and say yes. She’ll still bed you, and instant ejaculation will be less embarrassing.”
Hmm, a few characters left. I guess I don’t have space to talk about the drugs or the shoplifting. Well, at least I got the most important thing covered.
I’ll rephrase. That last part was not important in the Big Picture.
“NNNN is the one.Gay+geek+muscles will be cool soon.*Learn to accept small failures.*Study harder.MD diploma?Get to know parents while alive.”
Stay in the Army. Don’s marry Stephen. Make a play for Larry instead. After Army, get a history degree, don’t try accounting.
You’re young. Take chances. Regret nothing.
It isn’t going to be what you expect but its still going to be pretty damn good. Oh ---- and don’t buy that Chevette in 5 years. The shifter is a total garbage design that will make your summers a living Hell.
Meet future spouse sooner! He’s in college library in SF section, and his name is Andy L.
Dear me. message pointless. cell phone not invented this decade. sorry.
Drink less. Avoid Pamela, go for Karen instead.
School is not for you. Write. Seriously.
In 2017 post in this thread saying In 2017 post in this thread
Don’t waste your money on fast women and slow horses.
Nothing going on now matters.
My sixteenth year, eh? August 1979 to August 1980. I’m in grade eleven, slogging through math, art, physics, chemistry, and languages as usual. No romance or dates, though this is the year my locker was next to Lisa Kuwahara’s. (Used to ride my bike to the town line so I could call her from the phone booth there as a local call… we couldn’t afford long distance, or at least I was afraid to ask. I still had a massive crush on Kathy Sano though.
My parents had already split up, and I was living with my mom in the co-op. No money to send me on school trips to Cuba or England or anything, not that I was extremely aware of them. I was devouring ecological magazines in the school library and drawing and dreaming… while crushed by a sense of fatality and unworthiness that I was undeserving of anything good socially. Being bullied from kindergarten to grade nine will do that to someone. My few attempts at being social were met with ridicule, and I did not know how to proceed.
I had fled from Phys Ed after grade nine. I’d been skipped ahead in grade one, and as a result, I was always smaller and less physically-developed than those around me. Phys Ed taught me to be utterly ashamed of my body and my physicality.
My life was drawing and writing and reading.
How would the message get to me? No cell phones. Let’s say it shows up in the Board of Education’s mainframe in Oshawa and someone prints it out and sends it to me informally.
So the message. Hmm. Have to scrunch it a bit.
“ItGetsBettr.UHavFaceBlindness:CantRecognizPpl.Need2LrnSocialSkls.Spk&UseFrench&OthrLangs.Draw.GoToOCA.ExerciseAlone&DoGymnastics.URBi.PS:AngelaLikedU”
OCA is the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD U) in Toronto. At the end of high school I had the choice of going to Waterloo University to study architecture, or going to OCA to study some sort of art. I chose Waterloo. Mom thought I should have gone to OCA. I think now that she was right. Much later, I ran into someone who did go to OCA at this time, and it sounds like I would have thrived there. 
Most of the message is to explain things I did not find out until much later, like face blindness: things I did not even know were different than most people’s experience.
Angela was the first girl who ever asked me out, at the end of grade eight. Called me up at home and everything. I thought she was making fun of me and turned her down. Much later, I ran into her on Facebook, and she told me it broke her heart.
In my defence, it really was the first time anyone had asked me out. It was beyond my belief that someone, especially a cute girl, would actually like me, so of course I thought she was making fun of me.
I never heard it until a couple years ago. Sorry!
That boy you have a crush on is probably gay.
And the girl he took to prom, who was friendly with you for a while but backed off, is probably a sociopath.
30 years from now, you will have an experience that you will think at first is a bigger betrayal that the one that just happened to you (unrelated to the above lines). It won’t be.
Stop complaining; you can fix it. ALWAYS figure out what you need to do then DO it. Don’t start without a plan. No deviation. See it through
Mamá está como una puta cabra. Tus notas son buenas. No dejes que te amargue la vida. Mantente tú y a los chicos lejos de los avis.
Mom is fucking nuts. Your grades are good. Don’t let her fuck up your life. Keep yourself and the boys far from her parents.
My life is a disaster, with only minor accidental highlights. I should’ve pursued several different avenues and instead I waited for something to come to me for fear of the unknown. So my advice would be something like:
Concentrate on your passions, up sticks and go to where they are. You don’t have to be an expert yet, just be prepared to learn.
The only thing I would tell myself that is different from what I have done is “Learn fluency in a second language”. But age 16 is too late to start doing that. The only thing in my life that I regret not having done.