The Fran Lebowitz Reader (21 page)

Do not allow your children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth.

Letting your child choose his own bedroom furniture is like letting your dog choose his own veterinarian.

Your child is watching too much television if there exists the possibility that he might melt down.

Don’t bother discussing sex with small children. They rarely have anything to add.

Never, for effect, pull a gun on a small child. He won’t get it.

Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he’s buying.

T
here is perhaps, for all concerned, no period of life so unpleasant, so unappealing, so downright unpalatable, as that of adolescence. And while pretty much everyone who comes into contact with him is disagreeably affected, certainly no one is in for a ruder shock than the actual teenager himself. Fresh from twelve straight years of uninterrupted cuteness, he is singularly unprepared to deal with the harsh consequences of inadequate personal appearance. Almost immediately upon entering the thirteenth year of life, a chubby little child becomes a big fat girl, and a boy previously spoken of as “small for his age” finds that he is, in reality, a boy who is short.

Problems of physical beauty, grave though they be, are not all that beset the unwary teen. Philosophical, spiritual, social, legal—a veritable multitude of difficulties daily confront him. Understandably disconcerted, the teenager almost invariably finds himself in a state of unrelenting misery. This is, of course, unfortunate, even lamentable. Yet one frequently discovers a lack of sympathy for the troubled youth. This dearth of compassion is undoubtedly due to the
teenager’s insistence upon dealing with his lot in an unduly boisterous fashion. He is, quite simply, at an age where he can keep nothing to himself. No impulse too fleeting, no sentiment too raw, that the teenager does not feel compelled to share it with those around him.

This sort of behavior naturally tends to have an alienating effect. And while this is oftimes its major intent, one cannot help but respond with hearty ill will.

Therefore, in the interest of encouraging if not greater understanding, at least greater decorum, I have set down the following words of advice.

If in addition to being physically unattractive you find that you do not get along well with others, do not under any circumstances attempt to alleviate this situation by developing an interesting personality. An interesting personality is, in an adult, insufferable. In a teenager it is frequently punishable by law.

Wearing dark glasses at the breakfast table is socially acceptable only if you are legally blind or partaking of your morning meal out of doors during a total eclipse of the sun.

Should your political opinions be at extreme variance with those of your parents, keep in mind that while it is indeed your constitutional right to express these sentiments verbally, it is unseemly to do so with your mouth full—particularly when it is full of the oppressor’s standing rib roast.

Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn’t make up yourself—a wise move at any age, but most especially at
seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions.

Try to derive some comfort from the knowledge that if your guidance counselor were working up to
his
potential, he wouldn’t still be in high school.

The teen years are fraught with any number of hazards, but none so perilous as that which manifests itself as a tendency to consider movies an important art form. If you are presently, or just about to be, of this opinion, perhaps I can spare you years of unbearable pretension by posing this question: If movies (or films, as you are probably now referring to them) were of such a high and serious nature, can you possibly entertain even the slightest notion that they would show them in a place that sold Orange Crush and Jujubes?