50,000 B.C., Eurasia
“You don’t need to know what you want from life yet! All the most interesting people I’ve met had no clue in their teens, spent their twenties chasing aurochs, and were dead by thirty.”
15,000 B.C., Central Europe
“Please be helpful this week and stop making whistles out of vulture bones when you should be making digging sticks out of mammoth scapulas. Oh, everyone’s doing it? I suppose if everyone painted a phallus on a cave wall, you would, too?”
7000 B.C., Turkey
“Megaliths build character. Push! Push!”
1550 B.C., Canaan
“If you go out tonight, please take a pigeon with you. If you’re captured by Egyptian pyramid builders, we’ll want to have another kid ASAP.”
1400 B.C., Northern Africa
“Instead of griping about how that spoiled kid across the river has an awesome new stone carving of a leopard, try feeling some gratitude that our family owns rope. Rope! Do you even realize how lucky that makes you?”
650 B.C., Chaldea, Fertile Crescent
“We’re so happy that you’re ambitious, but, remember, if things don’t work out for you as a mule handler, you can always come back home. Unless Assyrian raiding parties burn down our hut and kill us first.”
500 B.C., Persia
“Be flexible. Roll with the punches. Sometimes you have plenty of ginger but very little cardamom. Then you’re flush with pepper, but everyone wants cinnamon. In the end, you realize that the spice you were looking for, all along, was you. Actually, no, that’s dumb. It was turmeric.”
400 B.C., Greece
“Respect your elders, please, and stop asking so many questions about how there could be twelve gods who all live together on a mountain. Have you been hanging around Socrates again? You know we don’t like him!”
300 B.C., Rome
“You want an aqueduct. You don’t need an aqueduct.”
700 A.D., India
“Your mother and I noticed that you’ve been fooling around with a new symbol lately. Etching it in the dirt, over and over. Honey, it’s O.K. to be sad sometimes. But we need you to be honest with us—are you using numerical zero?”
900, North American Plains
“Son, always give it your best shot. If it’s not your best shot, then we will have no bison meat, and everyone in this family will starve to death, and it will be your fault.”
1100, England
“Sweetie, if you feel uncomfortable, it’s always fine to say no. Not to your King, of course, who loves beheadings. And not to your future husband, who will own you as his property. You also shouldn’t say no to any priests or popes or scowling nuns, or to anyone with a sword. But, if you don’t like something, you can always whisper ‘No, thank you’ later on, in the quiet darkness of our donkey barn.”
1350, all over Eurasia
“Trust me, you’ll know you’ve met the right one for you when they’re within ten years of your age and they don’t stink or have plague scars.”
1520, Yucatán
“Learn from my mistakes, son. There are three things in life you should always avoid: snakes, women who talk to snakes, and the Spaniards.”
1600, England and Wales
“I’ll tell you how to deal with bullies—don’t let the bastards get you down! Remember, you’re better than they are, and they can’t even inherit a duchy.”
1640, Spain
“Some people act nice but are not nice people. What if they thought you were a heretic, a witch, or a Jew? If someone burns you alive, are they still your friend?”
1770, American colonies
“Don’t rush to grow up so fast! Once you’re an adult, you’ll have plenty of time to wear a white wig made of goat hair and scented with oranges that makes you look eighty years old.”
1934, Oklahoma, Dust Bowl
“Never be reckless with other people’s hearts. And never put up with someone who wants to recklessly deep-plow your virgin topsoil. One is an agricultural nightmare; the other is just mean.”
1968, San Francisco
“Travel. See the world. Go to space. Say hi to the Pigasus Pig. Remember the good trips, forget the bad trips. If you find good dope, share it with your mother and me.”
1999, U.S.A.
“You’re about to face the biggest challenge in human history: Y2K. Don’t be afraid. If you can get through this, you can get through anything.”
