Chelsea Fagan

11. When will I get boobs

Despite the fact that you, too, used a fake ID just a few short years ago, you are filled with righteous indignation. “Wait your turn, you brats,” you long to say, “Go drink 4 Loko in your bedrooms until you turn 21, like God intended.”

When you tune out the chatter, you find, there is so much about the city to love. There are your tucked-away corners with friends, places that you seem to have almost planted your flag in and claimed for yourself.

Glitter keychains that said things like “100% Angel.” (Bonus points if they said “100% Devil” on the back.)

This is the heady time when you are supposed to be utterly addicted to each other; if it takes them a full 4 hours to get back to a two-page text with “Lol,” there is no hope for your future.

Each relationship can be a sort of fingerprint, completely unique in its detail and entirely constructed of mutual memories and experiences.

Take a long bath with a glass of wine. (Have you ever gotten semi-drunk whilst marinating in hot water? It’s kind of the greatest thing ever.)

Chug a beer and then crush the can violently against your head every time you see a defaced political yard sign.

The point is, aside from just being unpleasant to be around, you are teaching your child that they do not have to be respectful. You are teaching them that the world is there to cater to them, that everyone else’s experience means nothing, and that whatever rules may exist do not apply to them.

Enjoy the brief bouts of unfulfilling coitus that pepper your life, occasionally bookended by some of the most forced, exasperated cuddling in the world.

Because women — yes, even young women, ones who live in cities and have sex — are just as affected by every law, every war, and every economic strategy as a man would be.

I would hope that we’re all at the point in our respective lives to have accepted that Boones, Andre, Two Buck Chuck, Carlo Rossi, and anything of the like are literally just crushing hangovers and despair in a bottle.

If someone wants to take charge of the finances, that’s fine, but it is not your job to show up with the expectation of being fanned with a palm frond as you rifle through your date’s wallet with a weed whacker.

I am only now peeling off the alcohol-soaked remnants of my Halloween costume as I gingerly sip a piping-hot Pumpkin Spice Latte. The leaves are still turning and falling. The weather is what can be described as “wool sweater-crisp” on certain days.

Essentially the people trying to rent apartments out get some Myspace-angle pictures of the place to put up, conveniently omitting the sides of the rooms where the walls are falling down and there are more cat pee stains than actual carpet.

Responding to people who text you as promptly as you can, within reason. No one likes to be left hanging on a “what’s up” for three hours.

Would your life be easier today if you hadn’t been so cavalier? Maybe. There is a chance that we dig ourselves into holes that are unnecessary, that contribute nothing to our better qualities or the people we are going to become — people we might actually like.

We can’t split up. It’s only three a.m.. Only the elderly and the terminally bogus go home at this geriatric hour.