For the Celebrate Reading conference in Fremantle late last year, I was asked to prepare something on the topic of ‘What I Wished Teenagers Knew’. This list sort of wrote itself:
1. Try to eat food made of ingredients rather than numbers
2. Many successful people are not in the habit of making their beds
3. Be a friend to your bowel and the many organisms that live in it, and they will all be friends to you
4. Don’t panic
5. If there is such a thing as godliness, cleanliness is probably not next to it
6. Listen more than you talk
7. Don’t be too concerned about hair – as time goes by, your body will give you more where you don’t want it and less where you do
8. Monotasking is under-rated. Sometimes it’s best to concentrate on one thing and do it really well
9. Any time you’re tempted to fall for the wisdom of crowds, remember that concept started out as just one person’s idea, and remember that sometimes the crowd is a mob
10. It’s okay to kill plants. It’s fun if they live, and you get herbs and vegetables but if, year after year, every plant dies on your watch, it’s okay to accept that you’re not a plant person
11. Choose evidence over anecdote, opinion and random statements, with the exception of these random statements
12. Be nice to old people, because I am one now and you will be one eventually
13. Flossing is a real thing and dental health or lack thereof has implications
14. I have friends in their 40s who still say quin-oh-ah, and it’s okay if you do that too
15. Tattoos are no way as reversible as you think
16. Your body is okay as it is. It is a vehicle you get around in and it is well worth looking after, but it is not the best bit of you
17. There is no justification for throw cushions on beds
18. Porn is not a reliable indicator of activities that people actually want to do
19. Read because it makes more you more empathic, more knowledgeable, more intelligent, more attractive and less gullible
20. Read my books because I have a seven-year-old to feed, clothe and put through cello lessons