1. Wear sweatpants for an entire calendar year.
2. Embrace tie dye, and people who wear tie dye, unless they have unruly facial hair, are wearing bells, speak in rhyme or a fake british accent, or blow bubbles. That’s how you distinguish the benevolent hippies from the ones who will cause you corporal harm.
3. Banana Republic is a good place to go to find really boring but business-like clothing and a lot of asian people.
4. If you buy things abroad, no matter how cheap they are, their stock goes up when you can say “Oh yeah, I bought that in Uruguay.” Or “This jacket is from the colonial British Congo.”
5. If you’re going to argue over who would win between the Polo horse and the Lacoste alligator in a fight to the death, you are a retard. It’s not an alligator; it’s a crocodile. Rene Lacoste was known as “Le Crocodile” in his tennis years. So shut your fat head.
6. Nine times out of 10, your mom will buy you clothing that is made for old women. Don’t wear it for 50 years.
7. Concert t-shirts let people know you are cool. Especially really obscure bands, like my band Bowl of Soul. Or my Bowl of Soul side-project, the Assless Chaps.
8. Something I vowed I would never wear, but broke down after a few years: Capri pants. However, three-quarter-length shirts, also known as capri shirts, are still unacceptable.
9. It is unacceptable to wear anything besides a sun dress in Ithaca until the daily high temperature is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. After that, you won’t have the opportunity until Hell defrosts.
10. Kids R Us is the only acceptable place to shop from the ages of five through nine.
11. At age 10, you need to realize that people will make fun of you for wearing Looney Tunes graphic print t-shirts that are two sizes too big so you can “grow into it.” From here on until age 13, only buy clothes at Gap Kids.
12. With respect to #11, if you only buy clothes at Gap Kids, all your clothes will match. Fall, earth tones; spring, pastels; summer, eye-stabbing neons. Good all around.
13. If you tell your mom you like Ugg boots, don’t also tell her your shoe size. Then you suddenly end up with five pairs of Ugg boots. And a couple years later when you ask for other boots, she’ll point to all your Uggs and call you ungrateful.
14. Muffin tops are for eating. Please figure out what size you are and wear that size. Please.
15. If you buy a purse at a Tibetan store, that incense stench won’t ever come out, and it will begin to smell like B.O.
16. Leather is actually really hard to clean. In the entire San Francisco Bay Area, there is only one store that cleans leather. That’s why it’s always good to have an extra cow on hand.
17. Stop spilling shit on yourself, Rebecca!
18. I still have no idea how to put on a scarf, having been to the hospital several times, near-asphyxiated.
19. I also have no idea really what the difference between mittens and gloves is ...
20. ... except that I really like glittens that have the string so I don’t lose them and get to look like Forrest Gump all at the same time.
21. If you wear Chuck Taylors, people will know you are cool and fringe. The higher the shoe goes up your ankle, the cooler people understand you must be.
22. Wearing a backpack is still, and will always be, the only way people know how cool you are in college. Backpack trumps Chuck Taylors. Especially a Jansport.
23. No, you will never again wear those things you bought freshman spring and sophomore fall for themed mixers. I’ve been trying to work all my gold chains and that flat top wig from the Mr. T party, but people stare in Trillium.
24. If you wear flip flops for enough of the formative years of your life, you will develop an extra large space in between your big toe and the next one over that will never disappear. But this will allow you to pick things up with your feet, thus making you evolutionarily advanced.
25. To Jason from Jason’s: It’s a headband, it’s not, as you called it, “a bandana banana,” Please just ring up my SmartFood popcorn and Nantucket Nectars.
26. Abercrombie and Fitch makes me feel: a) like I am going to go deaf, b) like I am really old and c) like, why are they allowed to sell such whorish clothing to children?
27. And why did I wear such whorish Abercrombie and Fitch clothing when I was a child?
28. If your mom writes your name in all your clothes, people will still take your clothes. It’ll just also have “WEISS” written on the tag.
29. If your mom also writes your name on your shoes, your mom might just be crazy, and this will be apparent to everyone you meet.
30. If the laundry building at your boarding school is four city blocks away from your dorm every single year, don’t go to boarding school!!!!!!!
31. If the laundry building at your boarding school is four city blocks away from your dorm, don’t do laundry when it rains.
32. If the laundry service at your boarding school puts the wrong clothes in your bag when it gets returned every week, that’s where all your socks go.
33. Your mom will send you large packages that you will hope have fun things and cookies in them. They will not. They will just have more socks.
34. If the laundry service at your boarding school puts the wrong clothes in your bag when it gets returned every week, and everyone else’s mom writes their name in all their clothes too, you will have a very good understanding of what kind of underpants everyone wears.
a. Greg Stephans wears womens underwear.
35. Nothing makes a girl less likely to hook up with you than a good ole pair of jorts, or jean shorts.
25. Math is hard.