STAY THE COURSE
DON’T LET ANYONE TELL YOU WHAT TO DO, THAT SUNSCREEN SONG IS BULLSHIT
DON’T LET YOUR SISTER AND BROTHER TALK YOU OUT OF USING NAPSTER BECAUSE IT’S ‘WRONG,’ NAPSTER IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD STEAL EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T NAILED DOWN AND LAURA AND JOHNNY DON’T KNOW SHIT
FUCK THAT
WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING SHOWING UP IN MY TIMELINE ASKING FOR FREE ADVICE?? I DON’T GO BACK IN TIME AND ASK YOU FOR SHIT
“WHATEVER”
IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE TO GET EVERYONE TO LIKE YOU, SARAH LOSH DOES IT EVERY DAY, TRY HARDER
YOU BETTER STAY HERE IN THE PAST AND NOT COME TO MY FUTURE TRYING TO DO SHIT TO ME, YOU STAY IN YOUR LANE
I DON’T GIVE EVEN ONE FUCK-PARTICLE ABOUT WHAT YOU DO, YOU’RE NOT MY KID, DO WHAT YOU WANT
HONESTLY FUCK YOU A LITTLE BIT
SOMEDAY YOU’RE GONNA ACTUALLY HIT A PIGEON WITH YOUR CAR, I KNOW IT ALWAYS SEEMS LIKE THEY FLY OUT OF THE WAY AT THE LAST POSSIBLE SECOND BUT THIS ONE WON’T, AND YOU’LL COMFORT YOURSELF BY SAYING “MAYBE IT’S OKAY” BUT COME ON YOU KNOW IT DIED
YOU’RE KIND OF A JERK BUT I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
FEEL AS BAD ABOUT YOURSELF AS YOU WANT, I’M NOT THE BOSS OF YOU
SOME PEOPLE WILL DIE BUT YOU ALREADY KNEW THAT, I’M NOT GIVING YOU ANY MORE FREE SECRETS FROM THE FUTURE, WHEN I WAS YOU I DIDN’T GET COOL SECRET FREE ADVICE SO IDK WHY YOU THINK YOU SHOULD GET ANY NOW
FUCK OFF SEE YOU LATER
Tags: advice, my younger self
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Sorry about the pigeon. That squirrel I hit (grazed, really) is totally 100% ok. I know it.
❤️❤️❤️
I once hit a turkey with my car. Just straight-up whammed into it with my headlight when it saw me and tried to fly the rest of the way across the road instead of turning back. I think it actually might have been okay, but when I got to work there was a big streak of dirt on the car and a couple feathers stuck under the hood.
My cousin hit a turkey with his truck and took it home for dinner. lucky for him it didn’t come back to life in the back seat.
This is the most delightfully rural story.
D: D: D:
zombie turkey..
Narrowly missed being struck *by* a flying turkey. I was passenger on Mr. Rose’s big motorcycle. We both saw the bird take flight from a tree a short distance from the highway. We both watched in horror as it became clear the huge bird was trying to fly over the highway. In our path. At the level of our heads. No evasive action was possible, at 70 mph with cars ahead, behind, and beside us. Narrow miss as we ducked, and we took the next exit, unplanned. We stopped the bike at the end of the off ramp. We both removed our helmets, to stare at each other saucer-eyed. We were trembling, with the knowledge we had just escaped being run over by cars and dragged at highway speed after impact with a large bird. It would have killed us.
That was ten years ago. We still watch for turkeys on branches next to the road. It would not bother me to know you killed that turkey.
Holy shit. Holy shit.
Turkeys are the dumbest fucking creatures on the planet. The world would be less delicious without them, but also safer.
oh my GOD I hate them.
There are three separate flocks that I pass on my commute and at least once a week there’s a turkey STANDING IN THE ROAD, staring at the cars slamming on their brakes, clucking a little and looking confused. GET OUT OF THE ROAD, TURKEY.
Ahaha there are a lot of turkeys in my area and that’s happened to me, too, although not with that regularity. Once I passed a pickup truck going the other direction that was stopped in the road staring down this big tom standing in front of it in an epic battle of iron wills. I was like, “well, good luck with that!”
I don’t know where you people live that turkeys just wander around loose outdoors, but they sound like giant versions of the dumbass quails we have here that I have no clue how they managed to survive and successfully evolve as a species.
My domestic turkeys get too close to traffic for my comfort. They seem to be better than this at staying out of the actual road, though. Better than my geese, at least.
I was driving a long minding my own business on a back road in western Massachusetts, when an oncoming car repeatedly flashed their lights at me, so I slowed down and rounded the corner to find a pair of domestic gees in the middle of the road harassing traffic. Not just standing there being stupid, but actively and aggressively banging on cars as they went past.
Geese. Devils incarnate, I tell you what.
I now understand why my mom may very well yell at an annoying driver that they’re a TURKEY.
Having grown up on a different continent, I’ve only met turkeys as dinner on a rare occasion…
THIS IS HOW I FEEL ABOUT GEESE. FUCK YOU, GEESE.
A goose bit my brother once.
No, seriously, he was 6, and got too close to a flock of them during nesting season. A mama goose charged him and bit him on the neck.
Flying turkeys are certainly something to see. This was a harrowing story to read!
Would it calm you to know that my father just texted me a picture of the turkey he just shot with a bow? (It’s turkey season here and oh man that is going to be DELICIOUS)
🙂
I was riding in a car the other day that hit a turkey, it flew off, but based on the speed and intensity of impact I’m not sure it was ok.
The worst animal hit I’ve had was the time I ran over a deer. I didn’t hit it (.that was the car in front of me), but I didn’t have time to swerve so ran it over once it was on the ground. I’m pretty sure that my car delivered the death blow. I was super shaken up, but otherwise uninjured. I did learn that my car insurance covers things like power washing the underside of the car to get the animal remains out (fur/skin/blood reportedly…I didn’t look).
I grazed a deer once, scariest thing (for all of us). I had just come up over a hill, saw it and just knew it was going to run out in front of me, but not enough time to slow down. I hit it’s back end, it stumbled and shook it self off and ran away. So it was totally fine. Right?? Meanwhile I had to pull over and practice breathing for about 20 minutes before I was ok to drive again.
I hit a turkey on my way to my first day of work at our SPCA. I had to get animal control to go back to the scene and help me look for it to see if it was injured. Not an auspicious start.
ILU.
I had to pull a pigeon out of the grille a couple of weeks ago. That was the one I didn’t see hit the ground and thought had done the sensible thing and, you know, moved out of the way of the 35 mph car.
Nope.
I always aimed for crows when I live in California (we don’t seem to have them in SL,UT?) I never hit one, but not for lack of trying. Mean, nasty things, picking on baby owls and cats.
Careful, you’re gonna make Brigham Young blush in his grave!
A co-worker of mine saw crows chase away a hawk that was about to to snatch up a baby duckling that had straggled behind its mama and siblings. I think crows are rather like people: a mixed bag of great and terrible.
But what if the hawk died of starvation? It’s the circle of life, man!
Perhaps the hawk was an inferior specimen and was unworthy of surviving to pass on his genes? The crows would have done his species a service. Nature is cruel.
Red in tooth and claw, for sure.
I would not be surprised if the crows did that so they could then eat the duckling, though.
I might feel differently if it actually happened, but I do scorn all those birds narrowly escaping from cars.
You can FLY, do you understand that? How can I sympathize with something that can fly getting hit by a non-flying car?
saw a pigeon running furiously ahead of a pickup-truck in a parking lot the other day. i did actually yell, “YOU CAN FUCKING FLY, DUMBASS!” at it. srsly, pigeon.
I once hit a seagull while BIKING. It ricocheted right off my shoulder, and dramatically exploded into a big puff of feathers.
I think it was a kamikaze hit.
That must’ve hurt like hell!
My dad hit an armadillo once while we were traveling. He assured me it was fine, but I bullied him about it for the rest of that year.
Then I’ll assume he’s correct. Either way “Rock The Casbah” is in my head now. I don’t think the armadillo in the video gets hit, he’s just hanging out.
“YOU’RE KIND OF A JERK BUT I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT”
I really do wish I had embraced this about myself a little bit earlier in my life (ideally while making everybody to like me. Because then I can get what I want. THAT’S ON THEM). It’s only the past year or so that I’ve started coming to terms with kinda being a real dick sometimes and I like it.
I don’t suffer fools and neither should you. If that makes me a jerk, I’m a jerk.
YOU’RE KIND OF A JERK BUT I HONESTLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT
This is great advice to my past, present, and future selves
Happy birthday to the ground!!!
(this is a Lonely Island reference that my sister and I use as our actual life motto.)
I’m not part of your SYSTEM!
MAAAAAAAAN
My Dad’s not a phone! DUH!
So many things, to throw on the GROUND
like THIS and THIS and THIS and TH- THIS
I’M AN ADUUUUUUULT!!!!!
I had a squirrel wait until my car was RIGHT IN FRONT OF it and -THEN- it jumped in front of my tire. That’s gonna haunt me until the day I die.
Oh god WHY DO THEY DO THAT??
Its last words: “nuts to this!”
I laughed more at that than I should have.
THIS MORNING!
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!”
“NO! I DO WHAT I WANT!”
*bump*
THAT SUNSCREEN SONG IS NOT BASED ON A VONNEGUT SPEECH OR INTERVIEW. BE SURE TO SET EVERYONE STRAIGHT ON THAT BEFORE IT BECOMES CANONICAL.
Poor Mary Schmich.
You really should wear sunscreen, though.
Idk, it seems like most sunscreen is actually trying to kill you just as hard as the regular old sun, so maybe just take your chances?
“FUCK OFF SEE YOU LATER”
“FUCK THAT”
I have needed that advice so many times in my life.
A bat. I hit a bat with my car. I thought it was a close call until three weeks later when I had to pull desiccated bat carcass out of my grill. That bat was totally not fine.
Also a raccoon. The raccoon made me bawl. But I couldn’t pull over because dangerous traffic on a two lane road in the rain. Boyfriend in the car had no idea what was the right thing to do. Trauma by proxy.
The bat was just disgusting and kind of prehistoric, but the poor raccoon haunts me.
I hit a raccoon once and my husband has never let me hear the end of it. I grew up in the country and we lost way too many chickens, pet rabbits, and possibly a cat to raccoons. They’re pretty nasty little beasts.
So when I saw that the animal in front of me wasn’t a cat, but a raccoon, I didn’t brake dangerously hard. My husband maintains to this day that I hit the gas instead. This is a lie.
If Past Me saw Future Me coming at her, she’d probably kill her due to her terror at causing like some kind of Butterfly Effect that caused the world to end in smoke and flames and angry hate filled cyborgs.
Better safe than, you know, reaped. http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Reaper
I guess I’d say “we’re really sticking with those shoes, huh? Oh, good, we’re not bald.”
“There’s still time, kid.”
I’ve been having moments lately, wishing I could tell younger me to go ahead and be wilder, sluttier, and generally less cautious. THANK YOU, Mallory, for having that same thought and full Auntie Mame on it.
“Go full Auntie Mame” is definitely the advice I’d give younger me!
There was a crow just chilling in the middle of the street yesterday. I carefully and respectfully drove around it and it didn’t even ruffle a feather, just continued inspecting some gravel or something.
Once I was driving home after a late, late shift at Steak n Shake as a teen, and I had just finished this horrible book about a murdery, murdery guy who kidnaps teens and keeps them in a hole in the middle of his house in the deep of the forest and pokes holes in their EYES and EAR DRUMS so they’re blind and deaf. But one escapes, and crawls into the middle of the road in the black night and an old couple hits her with their car. (And that’s how the book OPENS.)
The book was terrible, but it did convince me that the thing that I hit with my tiny Ford Focus was an escaping woman, not, as was revealed, a possum.
Goddamn that book was terrible.
Once my Grandma hit a bird in her car. It hit the windshield, and got stuck under the windshield wiper. Every time she tried to dislodge it by turning the wipers on, the wiper would come about halfway up, pulling the poor bird’s wing as it went. It looked like it was waving at us :O
I am a terrible person for laughing out loud at this story. Terrible.
Perhaps? But don’t worry, I was laughing the whole time. I was horrified, but I was still laughing.
I’d tell my younger self to learn how to braid my own damn hair already. I spent so much of high school unhappy with my hair and yet unable to do anything other than a ponytail, which I didn’t like. Come on, kid. I know you were busy but you could’ve learned during a school vacation or something.
I’d tell younger me about side parts, layers and the secret that we have wavy hair. That and to do some computer and web design classes.
I didn’t know my hair was wavy until I was 27! I had always thought it was just lumpy and gross. Turns out if I don’t brush it my hair is the envy of all I know.
Likewise with the wavy hair! Mine was straight until puberty and then it was terrible for several years. I finally gave up and stopped brushing it in college and yeah, like sarah_jay said, now the haters want to be me.
I’d tell my younger self to appreciate her beautiful, beautiful fine and shiny hair before it really thins out in her twenties. Also that she looks MUCH better with much less eyebrow.
like THIS and THIS and THIS and TH- THIS
I hit a cat when I was 17. I circled back to check on it, sobbing hysterically, but it was dead. (Not sure what I planned to do if it was still alive, horribly maimed, and suffering?) I’m still haunted by it.
Oh man I always hated that sunscreen song.
I once had a bird fly into my car THROUGH THE OPEN DRIVER’S SIDE WINDOW, BRUSH MY HEAD WITH ITS WINGS, hit the inside of the passenger window, and drop to the floor of my car stunned. Did I mention I was going like 35 miles an hour? One minute it was a beautiful spring day and I was driving to work singing along to the radio with my window open enjoying a lovely breeze. The next minute I was screaming bloody murder, swerving madly to the side of the road, trying to find a paper towel or something to pick up that poor bird and “rescue” it from my car, by which I mean I hysterically flung it out of the car using the tips of my fingers. I still feel guilty that I didn’t stick around to see if it would survive.
Next time I’m wondering if I should put the windows down or turn the air on, this story is going to count as several points in favor of the latter.
Like, I feel like I should tell my younger self to Not Fuck That Person, but actually I want to tell me ‘look, you get fat in yout twenties and that’s fine, plenty of people are still into you, but take the chance to fuck all the shallow, terrible-idea people while you’re still skinny enough to catch their eyes. It’s fine, y’know, these are a 1 shot deal, you don’t even need to talk much to them if you don’t want’.
"Think" is not in their repertoire.
Is it just me, or does that picture look like Mallory is hanging out with James Franco from Brokeback Mountain? Whilst drinking a milkshake?
That could bring about another thread of advice.
I believe you mean Jake Gyllenhaal.
Also, my dad always carried a tire iron in the car. Double usage. It was good for replacing a tire, and also good for any small animal that… wasn’t quite finished off.
I once sobbed in the car as my dad gave mercy to a fox.
Oh, horrid little story. On holiday a couple of years ago we saw a car drive over a rabbit (two fighting ones had rolled into the road) and break the poor things back. It was still twitching, obviously in agony, so we… did the only thing we could. Taking it to a vet was out of the question, so we, uh. Turned around and drove over its head a couple of times. Didn’t want it to die slow, you know?
We’ve had to do this to a young deer that got hit in front of our old house. Fortunately my husband is experienced at quick, humane (as possible) livestock slaughter.
My brother once rescued a baby rabbit from my mom’s cat. The poor thing wasn’t dead yet, just screaming. He had to bash its head in with a rock. That was the same weekend he had his first car accident, and also fell off a rock and faceplanted while emptying the compost pot.
So we’re just not going to talk about the dancing purple bull behind you then?
More like are we not gonna talk about how that picture was taken on the set of Brokeback Mountain because that is CLEARLY Jake Gyllenhaal right behind her, complete with cowboy hat?
The Purple Cow! Shakes and burgers – my nephew’s favorite restaurant, getting me one Kevin Bacon unit closer to Mallory. Yes? Maybe?
There are so many things going on in the picture that I’ve been waiting for someone to mention! I was about to scroll back up and double-check to make sure I had seen a purple bull and hadn’t imagined it.
So we're just not going to talk about the dancing purple bull behind you then?
Not even one set of winning lottery numbers? Dude.
AND *COOPERATE* WITH HER YOUNGER SELF, WHO FRANKLY HAS DONE NOTHING TO DESERVE SUCH A GIFT? WHAT KIND OF COLLECTIVIST PROPAGANDA IS THIS
Younger self buys a few toys, puts the rest in Apple stock. Older self funds private self-sustaining space station, gets off this rock before everything goes to hell. Everyone wins.
Yikes weird flashbacks. And yet I feel vaguely encouraged in the past, present, and future.
Also re pigeon: 1) Aged 19, driving on the left in the hills of coastal Wales, nothing to my right but sky (what jagged and crashing waves why would you say that to me right now.) Went around a bend and hit–not a flock of sheep, those are generally lower down–A FREAKING SEAGULL, right in front of my face on the windscreen, for the aftermath of which wipers are not designed. At all.
2.) Working in Golden, CO in an ad agency (why), I leave the building and cross the road, and a squirrel dashes into the road, into my path, and UNDER MY FOOT. I STEPPED on a squirrel. Neither of us was all right. I left that job almost immediately thereafter.
A raccoon used to build her nests yearly over our drive, about three stories up.
Baby raccoons would regularly drop out, onto the driveway.
…. just saying
“DON’T LET YOUR SISTER AND BROTHER TALK YOU OUT OF USING NAPSTER BECAUSE IT’S ‘WRONG,’ NAPSTER IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD STEAL EVERYTHING THAT ISN’T NAILED DOWN AND LAURA AND JOHNNY DON’T KNOW SHIT”
Like this, except with torrenting.
Strictly speaking, it is not necessary to yell at one’s Younger Self in order to advise them, but holy fuck is it impossible not to.
But watch out because when you get old enough, Younger Self starts yelling at you. Like CONSTANTLY. I know, I know, YS and I’m genuinely sorry. You have every right to be disappointed. So disappointed.
Dammit Mallory. I have been carefully drafting Advice to My Younger Self for my tumblr and now I even have anxiety about posting it there!!!
***
That rainbow lorikeet I hit was the first bird I’d hit with my car in over a decade. I definitely hit it, I saw it explode in a spectacular burst of feathers and there was blood on the inside of the rear mudguard D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D:
THIS MORNING!
"GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!"
"NO! I DO WHAT I WANT!"
*bump*
And now I’m having flashbacks to that one time 10 years ago when I hit a seagull and drove home crying and made my dad check the car for seagull remains. There were none, I’m sure it’s fine. Just fine.
Late to the party but it is so reassuring to me that other people have hit turkeys! One flew across the highway in front of me when I was 17 driving my old Volvo (oh hey younger self). I slammed into it at 65 mph and it was so large it covered the entire windshield (and shattered it obviously). I had to navigate to the shoulder with a large dead bird blocking my view, plus a bunch of blood and turkey flesh had sort of… squirted through the cracks of the windshield… ughhhh I still shudder thinking about it. The state trooper who came by said he hadn't seen anything like it in 14 years (imagine rural accent here), which obviously made me feel GREAT about my luck.
One time, I hit a vulture with my car.