RULES FOR ADOLESCENTS (AND THOSE ETERNALLY YOUNG) - 1st INSTALLMENT

Stairways and escalators are for moving upwards or moving downwards. (The operative term being moving.) They are not places where you may stop and wonder what exactly you should do next for a few minutes - there really are only two choices: get moving or get out of everyone's way. Nor are these appropriate places to stop and have a chat with your best friends about plans for the evening ahead. You're already hanging out at the mall -wasn't that your plan?

There used to be a quaint rule in libraries about maintaining an atmosphere of quiet studiousness. Now most libraries are a-chatter with teenagers vocally doing their homework, or just treating the library as an extension of the mall (which it sometimes actually is). If you wish to read or study in peace or quiet, there are a limited number of isolation booths available, which essentially means you're being made to feel like an antisocial freak. I yearn for a place I can go where silence is valued and nurtured.

Mostly for boys: Nobody on this bus except you and your buddies cares how wasted you were last night. Nobody thinks its cool except yourselves, and that creepy middle-aged drunkard/pothead in the back seat who cackles at everything you say. Nobody wants to listen to you share druglore with each other. Nobody thinks that when you say "fuck" eighteen times in thirty seconds and "yo" at the beginning of every sentence that you have established yourself as being at the pinnacle of Mount Stud. It would be pleasant to hear you say something once in a while that indicates that you might have a few brain cells that haven't been poisoned with testosterone and cannabis.

Mostly for girls: Sometime I'd like to meet that girl you're always complaining about, the one who lies, the one who is worthless, the one who does such evil things, the one you all should exclude from your special little clique, because you all know just what she's like. Oddly, she never seems to be one of you... or is she?