Jen Lancaster is a great writer and I own everything she has written. However, I tend to have a love/hate relationship with her because I think she's extremely judgmental and elitist, but I think she and her fans know that already. (She has, what E-Roc likes to call "white people problems" but that is a story for another time.) So since she moved up my shit list a while back for a blog I thought was out of line, I dropped her from my blog roll and "unliked" her page on FB.
Nonetheless, I still drop by her blog from time to time as I do other snarky bloggers that I once knew. (Funny thing is, Jen and that snarky writer have quite a lot in common. Heh. I will need to process how I choose and which women I choose to look up to and friend at a later date.......)
But I did run across something yesterday on Jen's blog that I wanted to write on myself from Chick Lit is Not Dead called "5 Things I'd Tell Teen Me". I haven't done any listing in a while, so I couldn't resist! Here goes.........
5 Things I'd Tell Teen Becky
1) You're Not Fat! Okay, I couldn't help but steal this one from Jen, because unfortunately, every teenage girl thinks this way. When I see cute teen girls out at the mall wearing their very short shorts, I think, "you go girl!" I wish I had that kind of courage back then. Sometimes I wish I could live for just a minute in my size 5, 120 lb body again. Okay, maybe longer than a minute. I think E-Roc would like it too. But I digress......
2) You Don't Have to Be Such a Rule Follower! I'm glad I came through school with good grades, citizenship awards and high accolades, but c'mon. I can't help but wish now I had just kicked up my heels a little bit back then! (Again, E-Roc probably does too!) Sometimes now I wonder what it would have been like to have been a little heathen kid. Sigh. I guess I'll just have to read the memoirs of others and pretend I was a bad girl too!
3) Those Mean Girls That Make You Cry or Embarrass You, They're Not Your Real Friends and Sadly, This is Practice for the Grown-Up Mean Girls of the World! Tsk, tsk, tsk. I can still remember those mean girls. I know them by name. Thanks to FB, I even know that some of them are sadly breeding now. I so wish I hadn't cared so much about what they thought of me or had been strong enough to have nothing to do with them once they had humiliated me once, twice and even three times. I wish I had learned that lesson young so I wouldn't have had to learn it more than once in adulthood as well.
4) Boys are Fun, but Don't Wrap Your Life Up in Them! When I hung out with an old college friend when we were in our late 20's we both agreed that we spent waaaay too much time with the boys back in our school days and not enough time with our chicas. Too true. Maybe that would have helped with learning the Mean Girl Phenomena.....spending more time with the good ones instead. Hmmm......another one E-Roc would support! (Not including him, of course.)
5) Listen and Learn from People Who Know Better......You Ain't So Smart! I have to admit it, I was a smartass kid. I was the kind of kid I would probably not even like today. Because I read quite a lot and had some smarts, I thought I knew a little bit more than I did. I feel like you may have earned the rights to your smartassery as an adult, but a green-shitting teenager? Not so much.
Well. This has been great. And hasn't made me feel old AT ALL.
But on this note of enjoying the memories of girlhood, I would like to do something unusual and send out a birthday greeting to my oldest friend and pen pal, WENDI WOOD FOREMAN. You may be grown and smart and motherly now, but I knew you when you drank Everclear and Kool-Aid. (Ooops, perhaps I should revise #2 up there?) Anyhow, I hope you have a great birthday, and just know this, you will always be Wendi Wood from Dallas to me......
Nonetheless, I still drop by her blog from time to time as I do other snarky bloggers that I once knew. (Funny thing is, Jen and that snarky writer have quite a lot in common. Heh. I will need to process how I choose and which women I choose to look up to and friend at a later date.......)
But I did run across something yesterday on Jen's blog that I wanted to write on myself from Chick Lit is Not Dead called "5 Things I'd Tell Teen Me". I haven't done any listing in a while, so I couldn't resist! Here goes.........
5 Things I'd Tell Teen Becky
1) You're Not Fat! Okay, I couldn't help but steal this one from Jen, because unfortunately, every teenage girl thinks this way. When I see cute teen girls out at the mall wearing their very short shorts, I think, "you go girl!" I wish I had that kind of courage back then. Sometimes I wish I could live for just a minute in my size 5, 120 lb body again. Okay, maybe longer than a minute. I think E-Roc would like it too. But I digress......
2) You Don't Have to Be Such a Rule Follower! I'm glad I came through school with good grades, citizenship awards and high accolades, but c'mon. I can't help but wish now I had just kicked up my heels a little bit back then! (Again, E-Roc probably does too!) Sometimes now I wonder what it would have been like to have been a little heathen kid. Sigh. I guess I'll just have to read the memoirs of others and pretend I was a bad girl too!
3) Those Mean Girls That Make You Cry or Embarrass You, They're Not Your Real Friends and Sadly, This is Practice for the Grown-Up Mean Girls of the World! Tsk, tsk, tsk. I can still remember those mean girls. I know them by name. Thanks to FB, I even know that some of them are sadly breeding now. I so wish I hadn't cared so much about what they thought of me or had been strong enough to have nothing to do with them once they had humiliated me once, twice and even three times. I wish I had learned that lesson young so I wouldn't have had to learn it more than once in adulthood as well.
4) Boys are Fun, but Don't Wrap Your Life Up in Them! When I hung out with an old college friend when we were in our late 20's we both agreed that we spent waaaay too much time with the boys back in our school days and not enough time with our chicas. Too true. Maybe that would have helped with learning the Mean Girl Phenomena.....spending more time with the good ones instead. Hmmm......another one E-Roc would support! (Not including him, of course.)
5) Listen and Learn from People Who Know Better......You Ain't So Smart! I have to admit it, I was a smartass kid. I was the kind of kid I would probably not even like today. Because I read quite a lot and had some smarts, I thought I knew a little bit more than I did. I feel like you may have earned the rights to your smartassery as an adult, but a green-shitting teenager? Not so much.
Well. This has been great. And hasn't made me feel old AT ALL.
But on this note of enjoying the memories of girlhood, I would like to do something unusual and send out a birthday greeting to my oldest friend and pen pal, WENDI WOOD FOREMAN. You may be grown and smart and motherly now, but I knew you when you drank Everclear and Kool-Aid. (Ooops, perhaps I should revise #2 up there?) Anyhow, I hope you have a great birthday, and just know this, you will always be Wendi Wood from Dallas to me......
Comments
I have to say that I agree with your list. I, of course, NEVER thought I knew it all. Oh, wait, not only did I then, sometimes I still do. Oh well, know thyself.
Here are my additions to the List:
1. People take their cues from you: if you don't like you, they won't either.
2. Know who you are so that you don't become someone you don't want to be.
3. Thoughts affect reality. If you think you are fat, dumb, lazy, etc, the universe will move to make it so (don't need Number 1 for that). If you think you are smart, beautiful, sexy, happy, same goes. Just remember that on both counts, ego is yours to control.
And for those of you who did not catch the Next Generation reference, you missed a seriously sexy old, bald guy.
And yes, I got the Picard (sp?) reference, but only because I knew somebody who used to say it.....