Hi Guys and gals
I think this has been published before but it needs a refresher.
This is the work of Charles
J. Sykes, author of the book Dumbing Down Our Kids: Why American Children Feel Good
About Themselves But Can't Read, Write, Or Add.
Rule 1 Life is not fair - get used to it.
Rule 2 The world won't care about your self esteem. The world will expect you to
accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out of high school. You
won't be a vice president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a
different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.
Rule 6 If you mess up, it's not your parents fault, so don't whine about your
mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7 Before you save the rainforest from the parasites of your parents'
generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8 In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as
many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest
resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9 Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few
employers are interested in helping you find yourself. You do that on your own
time.
Rule 10 Television is NOT real life. In real life, people actually have to leave the
coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11 Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
Rule 12 Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time
you're out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That's what you
look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for "expressing yourself" with purple
hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule 13 You are not immortal. (See Rule 12). If you are under the impression that
living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously
haven't seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule 14 Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school's a bother, and
life is depressing. But someday you'll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid.
Maybe you should start now. You're welcome.
Regards