Letter To My 16 Year Old Self

Saw this Dear Me Celebrity Extracts on The Guardian website, and thought I’d give it a go.  Not the Charlottetown The Guardian, but the British The Guardian.

Dear Robert,
It’s you, from the year 2011.  You’re now over 45 years old.  For the most part, only your Mom and someone named Linda call you Robert anymore.  Now, people call you “The Situation”. (This is a joke that you won’t understand until you get to be my age.  And even then, you won’t find it that funny.  Nobody calls you The Situation.  The Situation is, obviously, a name nobody will ever be called).  No, most everyone calls you “Rob”.  For some reason, you decide to drop the “ert” in your first year of university.
So, other than telling you about your name-shortening (which I just did), I’m going to speak in generalizations so that the time-line doesn’t get altered too much, because I’m pretty content with the place I’m at right now, and don’t want to mess that up too much.
So, the first thing to know is this:  You turn out pretty good, I think.  Got a few issues to work out, but who doesn’t.

In no particular order:

- In a couple of years, if you find yourself hemming and hawing about it, GO to that Doug & The Slugs concert.  Won’t say why, exactly, but it turns out pretty good for you, long-term.

- The biggest piece of advice I can give you - and this may fuck everything up for me/us in 2011 - is for you to be more forthcoming with speaking your opinion.  Don’t let your shyness influence who you are. Speak out and become more engaged.  You’ll soon be going to a party with a few friends at a cottage - it’s the same party where you discover the awesomeness of putting peanut butter on hot dogs - and, I implore you, don’t be so afraid to talk to the girls that are there.

- I know you have no expectation or even desire for this right now, but you’re going to make a pretty decent number of people laugh over the years. In this regard, I ask of you this: maintain perspective.  Don’t let anything go to your head.

- There will come a night when you and a friend from university go out, with the intention of drinking, partying, etc.  When that night arrives, I implore you... DO NOT drink so much tequila so quickly.  Otherwise, your night will end at 8:45, and you will have discovered that vomit ruins bibles.

- Don’t stop playing tennis.  And don’t eat so many potato chips.  I’ll not say why these two items are together, but if you use your brain, you can figure out what I may be hinting at.

- Start a band.  Not doing so will be a life-long “jeez, I shoulda...” disappointment.

Finally, just be yourself.  If you decide to ignore most of these suggestions, no problem, you’ll still turn out pretty good, I’d say.

Sincerely,
You, from 30 years in the future.