Sometimes I wonder how creepy and cool it would be to get letters from my future self.

Imagine it: you’re on your way to air out your mailbox (or face the depressing stack of bills and junk mail sitting in the void, since no one really writes letters anymore.) You open it, and there is a mysteriously addressed letter from a place called “The Future.” By a future version of you. I’m sure deep in my memory there exists a science-fiction film based on this scenario, but on a sincere level I would’ve welcomed a bit of guidance from my future self, especially over bumpy parts of my past. (Or maybe I would’ve freaked out and given myself a nervous breakdown — you never know.) Anyway, just as a weird little exercise, I imagined what my present self would’ve sent back to past mes at different ages. Other than werewolf skaters and first love, this is what’s on my mind lately — trying to get the pieces of my past to connect with what’s out there in the future, making the span of time feel continuous and meaningful.

Dear 5-Year-Old Me,

Congratulations on your first library card! You’re going to check out these books all the time: D’Aulaire’s Mythology, some novel about a Midwestern prairie settler girl and her favorite corn doll (told from the point-of-the-view of the doll, GOD I wish I could remember the name of this book, it had a purple library binding cover) and random issues of Mademoiselle, even though you have no clue what they are talking about. Pay attention to this mix, because it’s going to be the key to your imagination when you start writing. You’ll get a toy typewriter for Christmas and you’ll read the Peanuts and think typing “It was a dark and stormy night” again and again is what people mean they talk about “writing.” You don’t really have to begin each and every single story with a dark and stormy night. (Although curiously, every movie you make in film school will take place at night.) You may want to try just beginning your story in the middle and then figuring out what the best beginning would be, since this is what you’ll end up doing when you reach my age. Oh, and when Lisa B. makes fun of your laugh, don’t listen to her. She’s a hater. What’s a “hater”? It’s a word everyone will use in 2009. You can start now.

You’re also going to have a dream that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, one where you come to school with a box of donuts and no one wants them for some reason and you’ll wake up crying because you can’t give away your donuts. You’re going to spend a lot of time unlocking the message of this dream, which is basically deep down you worry that what you have to offer isn’t valuable to someone. The key is that what’s valuable is not just what’s in the box, but in the act of giving, so give even when you think no one out there is that interested.

Oh, and chasing your newest sister around the kitchen while screaming like a maniac at the top of your lungs and waving around a plastic sandbox shovel because she pissed you off? Don’t do that, either. She’s going to bug you about it for years.

xo k.

Dear 10-Year-Old Me,

This is going to be the weirdest age for you, because deep down you will not understand why half of your friends like boys, who are still mostly stupid and gross except for two main exceptions, who sit in two rows over from you, next to one another. Everyone will be preoccupied with boobs, which you don’t have yet. You’ll have very tumultuous friendships with neighborhood girls, which you’ll be bewildered by. Let’s begin with these, since you’ll spend a perplexing amount of time thinking about these. First, the neighbor girl who called you ugly: she’s a crazy Jesus-freak fundamentalist, and anyone who keeps wearing the same damn tube socks over and over again is kind of a freak. (Seeing those tube socks on girls in ads for a stupid company called American Apparel in the future will make you think of her and shudder.) Second, the other neighbor girl who you’ll get into a huge fight with and never speak to again: she’s actually a nice girl and you’ll miss her long after both of you have moved on, so don’t burn your bridges. One day you’ll realize how weird it is that every girl at this age fixated on one another’s looks, and maybe you’ll wonder if this appearance-obsession is something that women inflict upon themselves and give straight men permission to buy into.

Here’s the thing you should know: people are changing so fast, trying things out, and many pals are situational. You were strangely independent and self-sufficient up till now, so the best thing you can do now is to make a little island in yourself and put everything you love and value on it and let it ride out the hurricane of pubescence. Pack your psychological suitcase carefully, set it out on a boat and meet it in five years when you land on the Island of It’s Going to be Okay at age 15.

The great thing is that you’ll start writing stories because Mr. D. encouraged you. You’ll start writing about spaceships and the future and exotic countries and witches and outlandish, imaginative, fantastical things. You’ll start reading books by Robin McKinley about heroic, dragon-slaying girls. You’ll read Choose Your Own Adventure, which will change your life, and Sweet Valley High, which will not. Remember this, because you’ll go through a phase where you feel like all the deep people write about relationships and post-modernity and semi-traumatic sex. And that’s what works for them. But when you start really digging into massive writing projects that demand sustained effort, discipline and a level of commitment that exceeds most modern-day romantic liaisons — well, you need to remember what it is about writing and stories that made you love them in the first place. And how your writing will, in some way, honor that.

Also: don’t throw out your Madonna memorabilia. Or let your mom throw it away.

Ages 10-14 are going to suck hard. Sorry.

Oh, and when B. in fifth grade tells you that “horny” means someone who reads a lot of Playboy, he has it only halfway right.

xo k.

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