Tagged by the Devil to do this write a letter to myself at 16 thing.
Dear Tim,
Could you please go and buy some decent running shoes. My left knee has been giving me gyp for 15 years now and it\’s all because you insisted on going out for a trot every afternoon (yes, I know, it was to get off games and that\’s fine) in bloody plimsolls.
Yours, Tim
Hear, hear.
Dear Monty,
First of all will you stop feeling embarrassed about your embarrassing parents and grandparents chuntering on about the price of butter.
One day you will be the embarassing old fogey of the family, and you will be chuntering on about the price of broadband.
You will receive an invitation to the Cats Protection League Annual Sherry and Catfood Evening, and you’ll go. Dressed up.
You will write outrageous comments on the internet, with all the modesty and restraint of Ethel Merman in full cry.
So shut up, and get on with your homework.
Oh, and help your Dad with the crossword instead of being such a smartarse.
buy some gold or a airline ticket out. You have no idea what is coming.
Tim adds: No point in advising the younger me to do what the younger me already did. I’ve only spent about 10 of the last 30 years in the UK.
Mine would be much shorter Tim.
“Forget embarassment, buy condoms”.
Fortunately turned out to be a false alarm, but would have saved a lot of angst.
But I’m with you on the knee thing too, that would come a close second.
Interesting that you focus on the knees, as did Mary Schmich in her fictional commencement address (of Wear Sunscreen fame):
“Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.”
For me, it would be, “don’t slouch, back injuries really hurt!”
“buy some gold or a airline ticket out”
Mmm, Tim was born in March 1963. So when 16, he could have bought gold for $250/oz. It’s now $1,100/oz. So say four and a half times. If he’d bought an S&P 500 tracker, which at the time would have been 147, its now 3,900. That’s 26.5 times. So he’d be six times richer by believing in progress and capitalism.
So my advice to 16yr old Tim – don’t talk to old men.