1) There’s no need to worry. No matter what happens and how bad things get–cocaine and alcohol addiction, kleptomania, losing all your money to con artists, getting burned in a fire…it will be pleasantly resolved within a couple of weeks and never spoken of again.

2) True friends will wage protests in your honour. Donna Martin graduates!

3) It is completely acceptable to sleep with your best friend’s man…or your man’s best friend, especially if you’re in a different relationship at the time. Don’t worry–it’ll all be forgotten in just a week or two. By then, someone else will be sleeping with him.

4) If you get pregnant, just wear a baby doll dress and no one will ever suspect a thing (even if you totally look pregnant).

5) It is possible to be an expert in many things–swing dancing, for example, without ever taking a lesson. Seriously, you can get a major recording deal with just one song about clearing your throat. Try it–you’ll be surprised!

6) If you’re a good dancer, everyone else will clear the floor for you, watch your performance, and burst into enthusiastic applause when the song ends.

7) No matter who else you meet in life, you’ll always want to live with and get married to someone you were friends with in high school.

8) Bad girls are easy to spot–they smoke the WEED and pretend it’s incense. Don’t borrow their car, because a cop is going to stop you at an inopportune moment and find the WEED. It’s what you deserve for trusting a bad girl.

9) Even when you’re forty, people will still think you’re just seventeen. (Or so you tell yourself.)

10) If you’re nearly sexually assaulted, you have no one to blame but yourself. Your friends did tell you that dress was a little much.

11) You can be surrounded by some of the fanciest, most cutting-edge restaurants in the world, and you’ll still want to go to the local diner for the same old burger everyday. If you’re invited to an elegant dinner party or gala event, you’ll still go to the diner afterward. Can’t miss out on that burger!

12) Nothing brings people of different races together faster than a good line dance.

13) If you ever have trouble making a decision, just imagine yourself in a past life or some crazy fantasy future. That should make up your mind. What would Dylan of the Old West do?

14) If you’re a virgin, you can pretty much dress like a streetwalker–even to church–and no one will think anything of it. Cause you’re a virgin. If Kelly had been a virgin, she would have been just fine in that racy Halloween costume.

15) Never lose hope, ever. Even if your father was blown to bits in a massive explosion, there’s a good chance he’ll be alive again in a couple of years. Even if you saw him as a ghost a few times. Trust me–he’ll be back.