In school, when I was 14, I had to write a letter to the 17 year old version of me. I came across it again while packing this evening. 10 years later and it still has some good advice - excluding the part where I told myself to stop masturbating. Yeah, right.
I’m in LA right now and have been living in a hotel for the past week. I have another 5 days to go. I spent most of Friday night driving around the greater Los Angeles area, checking out neighborhoods to see whether or not they’re fit to move into. I’ve developed this great test for it, just don’t tell my mother:
Whenever I want to know if a neighborhood is safe, I walk around in it in the middle of the night. I peruse streets and dark alleyways with nothing in my pockets and my car keys stuffed in my underwear. I figured, in the event of an altercation with a thief, they’ll check my pockets for anything worth stealing and I’ll sadly inform them that they’re a little late and somebody beat them to it two blocks prior. In fear of my keys stabbing my junk, I would then cross my fingers and hope they don’t bring harm to my crotch out of disappointment (I’d like to think that even muggers and thieves uphold the courtesy of never inflicting pain to another man’s reproductive organs). If I happen to get stabbed, punched, kicked, mugged, shot and/or murdered during my walk, then I probably shouldn’t live there.
EDIT: I was just kidding about the keys in the underwear part. I tried it thinking it’d be funny if someone were to see me pulling out keys from my undies but I quickly discovered it was much too uncomfortable to have them in there.
Somewhere in Oregon.