Lesson learned: Don’t ever put a guy up on a pedestal. It’s too easy for him to tip over and fall off.

Lesson learned: If a guy tells you you’re his second choice, don’t make him your first.

The entire partying lifestyle was superficial in my experience, and most of my friendships were as deep as a shot glass and as short-lived as a pack of cigarettes.

People always laugh at me when I tell them I’m scared of pencils, because they can’t fathom why anyone would fear a puncture wound or lead poisoning from a pencil, especially now that it’s impossible to get lead poisoning since they don’t actually contain lead. But those fuckers are sharp, and I have nightmares about getting cornered in a room and repeatedly stabbed with one. Somehow knives don’t frighten me, even though they are the more obvious tool for both a real and imagined stabbing.

I thought of my sweet little girl and her chubby cheeks, big brown eyes and long brown hair with bangs that constantly needed trimming. She was all that really mattered in this world, and I could not keep moping over some guy who came in and out of my life faster than a season of American Idol.

Lesson learned: If you’re already resorting to writing shitty poetry (not the lovey-dovey kind) to get your guys attention within one month of meeting him, he is not the one.

Most memoirs about alcoholism, promiscuity, and addiction are deep, sobering tales full of scars that will never heal and include alarming statistics and reflection about recovery.This is not one of those memoirs.

Judge me if you must, but keep in mind how very little pleasure I could have possibly derived from a one-thrust sex session, a quickie in a closet, and a come-free drunken hookup. If anything, you should feel sorry for me.

I had a friend who got pregnant at age 14 and wasn’t quite sure who the father was. Her paternity test went a little something like this: “If it comes out black, its Darwin’s and if it comes out white its Ray’s.” This is how things were done in the trailer park.