RULE 16

Your parents and your little brother are not as embarrassing as you think. What’s embarrassing is ingratitude, rudeness, and sulkiness.

Sulkiness has become the universal performance art of adolescence, even though nobody in the history of mankind has ever looked at a sulky teenager and said, “I’d like to be more like that kid.”

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The clerk at the fast-food restaurant who thinks that being polite or offering friendly service is somehow beneath him might imagine that his monosyllabic, borderline-rude, sulking nonservice somehow protects his dignity or maybe even expresses his put-upon and wounded self-esteem. It doesn’t; there is nothing dignified about acting like a slack-jawed loser (thus the term slacker). And the moping-around, moody, hormonal feeling-sorry-for-yourself routine does not make you look like Avril Lavigne; it makes you look like a cliché.

You also need to deal with the fact that being embarrassed is not the worst thing that can happen to you, and certainly not worse than the things that you might be tempted to do to—or not do for—your friends, family, and acquaintances to avoid being embarrassed.

When you look back on it, dumping a friend, going along with a cruel or irresponsible prank, or avoiding being seen with your grandmother will seem a lot more humiliating than any embarrassment you may have dodged.