Saw this meme challenge on my favorite scrapbooking website Two Peas In A Bucket. I even remember seeing the layout in a magazine that inspired it. So what ten things do I wish I knew when I was in high school?

10. Jill Conner Brown, the Sweet Potato Queen said it best in her book SPQ Big Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner Something to the effect of: “If you are under 30 you are a precious darling thing and if we were you we’d take our clothes off and go running down the street” — this is not an exact quote. I spent so much time in high school worrying about what size I was. If you showed me a picture of myself then, I’d think “what a cow!” but if you showed me that picture now, I’d shout “What a teeny petite thing I was!” Who knew perspective could work on your body image retroactively?

9. Buy the typewriter with the largest size type for college. (I can’t remember, is it pica or elite?) Anyway, I had the smallest version. I suppose I thought I would cram more great thoughts on a page that way, but when you’re writing papers by the page, big margins will take you only so far.

8. Combining a spiral perm and living at the beach makes you have blonde hair until the perm grows out. Then you have roots. Then you have to color the roots. And get another perm. I do love being a blonde today though. And strangely enough, I grew up to have curly hair. I think it was a Darwinian evolution, for which I am grateful.

7. Spray starch will make your polo shirt collar stay up. (I thought I just had low ears or something!)

6. Hairspray makes the Farrah work. Lots and lots of hairspray. Hairspray touchups throughout the day. It doesn’t work with beach humidity, a curling iron, a spiral perm and NO hairspray.

5. Pleated pants made everyone look like they have a belly. I’d like to thank Trinny and Susanne of BBC’s What Not to Wear for making that perfectly clear, more than 2o years later.

4. No one looks good in that 80’s shade of green eyeshadow.

3. It’s okay to bend the rules, maybe even to break them.

2. Contact lenses don’t hurt your eyes the way your dad (who had hard lenses in the 70’s) said they would.

1. Well-behaved women rarely make history!