The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself

Congratulations, you got born. Odds are you won't find that or the next few months half as interesting as anything else ever, but be assured you began to cost your family money from the second your cells began dividing.

After the thousands spent to keep you from from starving or staining the furniture, you'll get shipped off to a place where you will instantly learn you're not all that. Seriously, there's billions of things just like you milling around this planet and at this point you'll be no better or worse than any other, so be nice and focus on learning to read and write and add because beyond that there really is nothing you can't learn on your own. Sure, it helps to have someone to tell you what the hell nuclear fusion is about, but for the most part if you're capable of thinking for yourself you'll figure it out eventually.

Don't bother trying to start out being some fancy thing that won't make you loads of money, because the first thing potential mates will ever care about is whether you're going to need them to pay for things like bandages or cereal. After you've made your money then you can go be as weird as you want and people will love you.

Don't get injured or otherwise sick. No one cares. Unless you have money to put into the healthcare system, then it will take all of that money to figure out just what the hell is wrong with you. Nine times out of ten no one will ever know what the hell is wrong with you.

You probably can't live in a tent, someone will kill you or you'll freeze. But they're much cheaper than those things that stand on land and tend to be eaten away by insects and the elements.

As you get older, make sure you have interests of your own, because your friends are going to get annoying and your children--if you've managed to pull off that part of the game--will be off oiling the cogs of the great machine in ways they think you didn't. If you're lucky you'll have someone you can stand that can also stand you and you can make fun of everyone else together. If not, animal shelters are busting at the seams with instant love on legs.

Don't waste time thinking about death. You'll get there eventually and it doesn't matter how. The important thing is that you manage to make everyone incredibly sad when you go and one way to do that is to be awesome. Not loaded with money, because money is not being awesome. Have some interesting stories to tell, know something worth passing on, if it's really good they'll remember it. Unless you've chosen the wrong people to tell your stories to, but that's just a general failure of judgment on everyone's part. Some people don't belong together, and it's better to recognize that before the stabbings.



Use well what you learn.

The Racket: A Letter I Ought To Have Sent Myself