Dear Four-Eyes,
At the risk of stating the obvious, I feel I must offer you some common-sense advice.
Let’s start with the first problem. You get to school 30 minutes early:
You see, when you get to school so early, you give Connor, Brock, Chet, and Brayden the opportunity to make fun of you. Every day without fail, you for some reason choose to walk directly in front of the gang hanging in and around Brayden’s dad’s red convertible.
Solution: instead of getting to school 30 minutes early, walking right in front of them, and hiking your backpack straps up as high as possible (making you look like a dweeb), you could instead get to school right on time and take a different path to class. That way, they won’t see you, and it’d be harder for them to make fun of you.
The next problem is that you wear glasses:
Now I know what you’re thinking: Hey man, that’s out of my control—it’s not my fault I don’t have perfect vision. You’re totally right, but that doesn’t mean you have to wear one-inch thick lenses that honest to God make you look like you have four eyes. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 90s high school nerd or if you’re from the 50s or 60s, okay? Contact lenses were invented in 1888. If for some reason contact lenses dry out your eyes or give you any trouble, you could also consider wearing a normal-looking pair of glasses. Either works. Just, and I want to stress this, there is no reason to wear the style of glasses you’re wearing right now.
We must also address your sense of style:
There’s nothing wrong with looking prim and proper, but let’s ask ourselves a question: “Are most people wearing suspenders or is it just me?” The key is to fit in. I know this might sound like a crazy suggestion, but experiment with leaving your shirt untucked. It might feel weird at first, but its benefits are twofold: you’ll look normal, and going pee is much less of an ordeal.
Now, in terms of lunch money:
Consider bringing a check or perhaps just loose change. The main issue here is that keeping a couple dollars in your pocket makes it too easy for Brayden to get away with stealing it. If you can get your parents to write you a three-dollar check, however, the lunch ladies would notice when Brayden tries to pass it off as his own. If you can’t do that, a pouch of loose pennies and dimes should do the trick. Brayden wouldn’t want to look silly paying for his lunch with hundreds of coins, so he’s more likely to leave you alone. And, as a bonus, you’ll get to feel like a wealthy, medieval nobleman, secretly in possession of much gold beneath your many layers of wool.
Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t offer you a few rapid-fire pointers on getting through the rest of high school:
- Change name from Allistair to AJ.
- If you’re going to be in the robotics club, try designing some mechanism that defends yourself from Brayden’s attacks. (DO NOT bring a shield to school again. That didn’t work, remember? He ended up taking it from you and beating you with it.)
- Join any other club besides the robotics club.
- Do not dress up as Groucho Marx for Halloween. No one will understand that the mustache-and-glasses costume is based on a real person—they’ll think you’re just going as an even nerdier loser than normal
- Don’t insist on calling the robotics club the mechatronics club. It doesn’t matter that it’s more accurate. That’s not the point. The point is that you’re being a dork.
I truly wish you all the best, and if anyone asks, we’ve never spoken.
—A former nerd turned cool kid