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for J.R. on his 17th birthday

Leap often to get used to the view.

Swing from tree limbs every day to make sure your arms stretch to the proper length.

Growing up is not only difficult, but also extremely time-consuming.

Instead of the future, day-dream about the past—the one thing your warped desires can’t destroy.

It’s true that some caterpillars turn into lovely butterflies, but many more turn into drab brown moths. Avoid metamorphosis altogether if possible.

Friends come and go but books stay with you, even in a strong wind.

Instead of going on dates, court boredom, which will never desert you.

Make friends with the invisible family who lives upside-down on your ceiling.

Have somebody record your height on a door with a pencil every year. If the marks start to go lower rather than higher, this could indicate that instead of growing up, you are growing old.

Avoid anything that prevents a good night’s sleep. Prizes, for example, are for livestock.

Remember: you can keep learning all your life, but you’ll never again be able to skip school.

Experiment with different personalities.

Don’t be over-clever or let yourself be fired out of a cannon.

Feeling hungry? Try eating!

When I was your age, I was young.

If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you jump off a cliff too? Why not? Don’t you like your friends?

Playing video games imparts a valuable life skill: how to hold your pee.

Watch movies rated for mature audiences. These are usually the most juvenile.

If you dream of a career in politics, learn to do magic tricks.

Hypnotizing chickens is not merely a fun stunt—it also makes them tractable prior to execution.

Go to school with blood on your shirt. Say it’s your name in Chickenscratch.

If all else fails, learn to walk on stilts.

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Let your yesses mean yes and your nos also mean yes.

Blink authoritatively like Jeannie in I Dream of Jeannie.

Acquire a sleek and gleaming surface, punctuated only by a minimalist logo.

Have your people call my people.

Regardless of emergent properties, any whole can be reduced to the sum of its parts through the elimination of each part, for example during warfare.

Flagrantly compare apples and oranges. It’s no worse than lumping Winesaps with Red Delicious.

If two wings are good, three wings must be better!

Every problem is a word problem. Make language your bitch.

Assume that the soil removed in digging a hole will never be enough to fill it again.

Plan on emptying your bowels to make up the difference.

Don’t use a broker; find a money-whisperer.

If you want to be on the winning team, side with death.

Rename all the numbers, starting with A.

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During horse-play or rough-housing, keep your head in its case to avoid injury.

It’s not play if there isn’t some risk of dismemberment.

Climb to the top of a top for a 360-degree view of the room.

Don’t let the other players know the rules, or even that it’s a game.

Meet the gaze of random strangers and whisper You’re it.

Hide without seeking. Stay hidden.

Change your mask every few years to avoid detection.

When exploring a forest, arm yourselves with silence and trashcan lids.

Monsters are terrified of chalk. They can be bribed with erasers to do anything you want.

When falling from a great height, flap your arms wildly—you never know.

Hand-puppets should never be given real mouths. They will want real anuses next.

Only an adult can legally consent to be a toy.

Blocks may be made out of anything that’s shaped like a block.

A toy with a power button is a tool in disguise.

The point of a ball is that it has no point—however it happens to land, it’s always at rest.

Cut it open and breathe its peaceful air.

Laughter is the body’s rebellion against the mind.

What’s the point of winning if you can’t suspend all the rules?

Get everyone to run in place and you can make the earth spin faster.

When you collapse, make sure to collapse in a heap.

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Repeat after me: reproduction is mandatory, but sex is dirty and sinful.

According to scripture, you can minimize contagion by keeping it in the family, or at least the tribe.

Hold hands when you walk, preferably ones that are still attached to bodies.

Check with local jurisdictions before deciding to go topless or baring an ankle.

Lower the newspaper between you slowly to increase your partner’s excitement.

Use the fire exit only for emergencies.

Boundaries are important in a relationship.

A zygote deserves every right of an American citizen, presuming it’s not in the country illegally.

Remember: oral sex never leads to pregnancy unless both partners speak the same language.

Don’t buy leather unless it’s been cured with brains.

Choose the lovers’ leap that’s right for you. Does the vegetation at the bottom match your blouse?

Holy spirit possession is the only truly safe sex.

Don’t just rock—roll! Make yourselves into a perfect cylinder of lust.

Angels, like snails, are hermaphroditic, which may account for their air of superiority.

Find new uses for mucous, O pushers of the envelope.

Know thyself, sure, but don’t stop there.

If you want the candle to stay erect, dribble hot wax into the holder.

Let your eyes do all the work, like a seed potato.

Use a 3-D printer to make plastic copies of yourself.

Don’t stop with circumcision. Remove the flesh around the ears, lose your eyelids, pull out your fingernails.

We shouldn’t presume to separate ourselves from the suffering world.

The mouth is born without teeth, just a tongue and a howl.

Nature is against nature.

Most birds have no penises, and most honeybees are non-reproductive females who act as sexual go-betweens for flowers. So much for the birds and the bees.

As for storks, they only live in the Old World. Their closest relatives in the New World are vultures.

Delivery of your order is by sea, and may take up to nine months.

Contents may expand in transit.

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Learn to love silence and the taste of water.

Let birds nest in your best suit.

Live at home.

Change your mind often to prevent wear.

When called upon to speak, let words escape you: ululate.

Weep at weddings, dance at funerals, sleep-walk in parades.

Peg your moods to the weather.

Keep careful records of the shapes of clouds.

Burrow like a star-nosed mole into the task at hand: blindly, guided by an extinguished light.

Give yourself up like a river in flood.

Whatever you accomplish, make it look as if it happened on its own.

Form a committee for the reinvention of the wheel.

If you’re boring enough, even death may forget about you.

Erase your tracks with a worn-down broom.

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Stop searching. Only pre-existing itches should be scratched.

Pull the petals from a daisy, then use tweezers to remove the yellow florets in its eye.

This is the way to perfect your own seeing.

Court sleep as if it were a lover.

When you dream of being chased, stop fleeing—let yourself be caught, killed and dismembered.

Your dreams will be so much better with a new protagonist!

Call your own phone number and say, Who’s this?

Have a notary’s signature tattooed above your genitals.

If you’re claustrophobic, team up with an agorophobic and make love from a safe distance.

(Love-making is dangerous: you can discover too many things at once.)

However quickly you’re going, go faster still.

Give each of your possessions a pet name and a safe word.

Work. Do somebody else’s bidding for 50 years.

Vacate. Watch a log burning in a fireplace on cable TV.

If you want to find God, sin flagrantly to invite divine retribution.

If you want to follow your gut, you must first acquire a gut.

Close your mind and open your mouth to every sweetness.

You are a child of the universe. Stuff yourself until you resemble a minor asteriod.

Each borborygmus is a message from the other world.