Checking out the “Freshly Pressed” section of wordpress last night I came across a blog entry entitled “Dear Me: A Letter to my Sixteen Year Old Self”. It talks about a book that recently came out by the same name in which a bunch of celebrities write letters to their sixteen year old selves. J.K. Rowling, John Waters, Rose McGowan, even Jim Belushi writes a letter to his sixteen year old self (you think the letter would say something like “Hey your much funnier older brother is gonna die in 12 years of a drug overdose so do something about that” but it just talks about how he’ll do well in a school play or some bullshit). The sentiment rings a little hollow since these are all celebrities writing to their younger selves (just be you! It’ll make you millions of dollars tee hee!) but it’s still a pretty nice idea.

Reading about this inspired the blogger to write her own letter to herself at sixteen. There’s actually a section on the book’s website where you can submit your own so I thought I’d give it a try and write a letter to the person I was thirteen years ago.

Young, thin and a head full of hair. Damn your beauty, younger self!

Dear me circa 1998;

Okay, I’m going to need you to stop masturbating for like five minutes to read this. Please, just stop. I know what you’re doing in there. It’s you from the future. Listen, just stop jacking off for two minutes. That’s all I need. Two minutes. I KNOW YOU’RE NOT GOING TO THE BATHROOM IN THERE. Just stop it, I’m begging you. I traveled back in motherfucking time to give you this stupid letter so could you just for once hold off on spanking it?

I know it’s not easy. You’re sixteen, it’s going to be an hour before anybody gets home and the new Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog just came in the mail but you have a whole life of whacking off ahead of you. Pretty soon you won’t even need that Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog! You’ll have actual porn!

You can totally almost see her entire boob. Thank God for Victoria's Secret's trashy sister.

Jesus Christ are you even listening to me? I”m from the goddamn future! You could learn so much! Oh, for fucks sake running the shower doesn’t help. I know what you’re doing in there!

Aren’t you even curious about what happens to you? You get laid someday, how about that? It’s true. You end up having sex! With women! For free! You even get married and not even in the shotgun marriage situation that you always assume is going to happen! Sex! With multiple women! Most of whom are actually pretty hot! Followed by a happy marriage!

I will tell you that you don’t lose your virginity until you’re twenty but it doesn’t have to be like that. You could probably get laid in high school. Look at you! If you would just pull up your pants for five seconds and come meet the trainwreck that your body becomes and realize that you can get laid looking like I do you might actually get the confidence needed to talk to girls instead of SPENDING ALL AFTERNOON USING THE CONDITIONER FOR PURPOSES THAT IT WAS NOT INTENDED. Seriously. If you just had the confidence and stopped styling your hair like a young Ted Koppel you could cut a swath of hedonism through that goddamn school.

You’re seriously still in there? Holy shit. Here. I have last week’s winning Powerball numbers. How would you like to be a multimillionaire in thirteen years?

…

Whatever. Fine. I’m just going to slip this letter under the door. It’s about being true to yourself or some bullshit. Have fun wasting your teenage years jacking off and playing Final Fantasy VII.