50 First Rules of Being a Teenager

1. Trying to disguise that embarrassingly prominent zit on your cheek… by drawing on it with a marker and pretending it’s an extremely large freckle/mole. Never mind the fact that freckles and moles can’t sprout overnight. Other methods include putting a ton of powder on it, trying your hardest to pop it or pretending it doesn’t exist at all.

2. You can’t put your eyeliner on one morning because your sibling just stole it. And HE doesn’t return it.

3. Your most treasured possession goes from your teddy bear named Fluffy to your iPod named Sally.

4. Guys suddenly notice girls have boobs. Girls suddenly notice guys have leg hair.

5. Girls start reading racy historical romances with dashing lords and half-naked ladies on the cover. Guys start reading Playboy.

6. Two words: internet porn.

7. You work long hours at the most hellish job ever, nearly die, finally get your pay check and then blow the entire thing on CDs, the newest Xbox console or that cute top from Esprit.

8. One day, you feel like punching the lights out of your younger brother/sister. The next day, you feel like giving him/her a huge bear hug.

9. Arguing with your parents is an extremely normal occurrence. Your neighbors being able to hear you is too.

10. Without a cell phone…

11. You are willing to pay 400 bucks for that new Prada purse/kickass computer monitor but whine when the price of lunch in school goes up by 40 cents.

12. Bringing your own lunch to school in a brown paper bag is suddenly embarrassing.

13. Guys: cheerleaders/the nerdy girl in Chemistry with the innocent pigtails and cherry-red lips. Girls: hunky sports players/brooding musicians/sexy Goths.

14. Emo is the new happiness.

15. You cannot survive a day without listening to some form of music.

16. You add people with even the slightest connection to you (e.g. friend of a friend of a friend) just to have a lot of friends on MySpace/Facebook and gain that bragging right.

17. Social networking sites are the bomb!

18. You have about 5 different email accounts and you’ve forgotten the address of the last 3.

19. Skinny jeans.

20. The most prized possession of a sixteen-year-old… his/her driver’s license/provisional license.

21. You know the legal drinking age is 21 but you drink anyway.

22. You know doing drugs is illegal but you do them anyway.

23. You’ve made out, drunk/stoned out of your mind, with someone you just met at a party and woke up the next day unable to remember a thing. Conversely, you have also spent Friday nights at home reading or studying like a good student before being named a nerd/geek. ‘Like, dude, do you have to call me that?!’

24. Curfew? What curfew?

25. Before prom means splurging on a dress, shoes, make-up, hair, accessories and a boutonnière. Or rather a tux, a stretch limo and a corsage. Parents whip out the camera, you protest, but you secretly like it. During prom means lots of dancing, spiked punch and a ton of fun. After prom means making out in the car, passing bases and possibly loosing the big V.

26. You own an uncountable number of CDs, and also an uncountable number of downloading software.

27. Girls: Tom Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio are so out. Channing Tatum and Jensen Ackles are so in. Guys: Marilyn Monroe and Nicole Kidman are so out. Jessica Alba and Kiera Knightley are so in.

28. Movies like The Notebook make you cry your eyes out. Saw III, however, just made you scoff at its overall lousiness.

29. You tell yourself to start thinking about colleges when junior year starts, but when senior year arrives, you still have no idea which college you want to go to.

30. You’ve failed at least one class and not given a damn.

31. You’d rather die than have a scratch on your car.

32. Girls: when your boyfriend cheats on you, you break out the Ben and Jerry’s. Guys: when your girlfriend cheats on you, you feel like beating Ben and Jerry up.

33. Sunday nights are spent on AIM trying to get the answers to that Calc worksheet… at 2 AM.

34. When your Bio teacher goes into the topic of sexual reproduction, you can sleep because you know everything already.

35. Hair on girls’ legs and armpits must be shaved off, no matter what. However, hair on guys’ legs and armpits means they’re manly.

36. Deodorant is a must have, especially after gym/physical education.

37. You take way too many extracurriculars or join way too many clubs at school just for the credit points.

38. Your vocabulary expands to include the rather aesthetically pleasing words ‘damn’, ‘fuck’, ‘shit’, ‘crap’, ‘blow’ and ‘let’s go up’.

39. Once, you devoured Harry Potter with the eagerness of a little girl who just heard the ice-cream van. Now, you read it and find sexual innuendos in about every single thing - e.g. Luna Lovegood.

40. You do not sneak out from the house at midnight to meet up with your friends to mosh at a local band concert. Seriously.

41. You get totally red in the face when your friend looks at your CD rack and finds out you have a Spice Girls/Backstreet Boys/NSYNC CD (or two) on it.

42. You feel the urge to burn all your baby photo albums, or at least lock them up so your parents will never be able to find them and show them to your friends/boyfriends/girlfriends ever again.

43. When you go shopping with your mom, both of you can never agree on anything.

44. Guys discuss length. Girls discuss width.

45. Guys have a fresh stock of condoms. Girls have a fresh stock of The Pill.

46. You have not spoken to half the contacts on your cell phone in the past few months.

47. AIM/MSN/YIM is your LIFE. Also, your screen message is set to some sort of song lyric at one time or another.

48. You’ve had at least two unrequited crushes before turning 16. You have also clicked onto their MySpace profile, AIM profile or whatever profile a million times, stared at their picture for 5.6 minutes and sighed in disappointment, knowing internet stalking is illegal but you do it anyway.

49. GILMORE GIRLS/BAYWATCH! (Entirely dependent on gender.)

And lastly…

50. You get onto the subway/train/bus, look at the businessmen/businesswomen/twenty-somethings/middle-aged people/retirees/senior citizens in the same carriage/row as you and think: I’m so glad to be a teenager.