I am your 16-year old self, write me a letter. Tell me as little or as much as you want, I’m all ears!
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Letters to the Teens
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Responses
Dear Stinker-Girl, So you think that you are hot shit and popular. Well, your wild ways are going to get you in trouble. Howard Kaylan is a married man. Don’t be messing around!!! It is fun hanging out with the Crossfires (later they will be the Turtles), but try to keep your underpants on. Rob writes songs and you will not like it if he writes a song about your wild ass ways. It will be humiliating for you to hear those song on the radio, after your mistakes catch up with you. Flo and Eddie (Howard Kaylan and Mark Vollman) are fun to be around, but trouble is ahead for you.
Your dance partner at the roller rink is a future serial killer. It is best not to anger him. In fact, if you drop him now —- let him go his way and forget him, life will be less of a drama. But, you never listen to advice.
You will lose your boyfriend this year. You will be heartbroken as you see Lowell Henry date other women and he will marry someone else. You will be wise and you will befriend his wife and your patience will pay off when you are about 45. He will rethink his mistake of leaving you and you will marry him. Too bad his drinking will end up killing him, but you will have some good years together.
The trouble ahead, from hanging out with Rob, Howard, and Mark will end in a pregnancy at 18. Life will get complicated. The child will be your shining star of your life, but you could avoid it all if you settle down and behave yourself. You will have a string of marriages that will fail. You are looking for answers to a problem that you would not have if you stop hanging around with the surfing crowd. You could go to El Camino College, get a good job at Mattel Toys and have a different life, but you will not listen to me. You don’t listen to anyone.
Things will work out in the end. You have to make your own mistakes and find your own answers in your life. No one can tell you anything. I am writing you from the future. After you marry Lowell Henry and he dies, just hang in there. Wait patiently because there will be a better partner ahead and your Senior years will work out just fine and you will be happy. I wish you all the luck in the world. Your wild ass will need it.
Love you always,
Barbara Henry
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All I can share without altering the awesome outcome . . . is that you’re going to be OK and that everything is going to work out far better than you can imagine. I’m living in the middle of it happening . . . and it’s still better than I can imagine! You’ve experienced a lot; but nothing was “a waste”; nothing was in vain. Everything will find a purpose; and every trial will some day, in some way turn to gold.
Just like the adventure shows you like, the best treasures often involve the most difficult and perilous paths. That is what separates “rare treasure of great value” from “common allowance” [standard pay]. And that is why the people who never seek the adventure — or embrace the adventure that falls upon them — never seem to amount to much more than just “standard pay”.
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