How to Go Down the Wrong Path

There are pivotal moments in every person’s life when he or she must choose between paths. Do I go straight to college or travel first? Do I marry the first person who asks or wait for Mr. Right? Do I take the main road on the map or the badly marked shortcut through the dark and scary part of the forest? Tomes have been written about taking the right path, choosing wisely and making a good decision, but if you want to eschew common sense, follow these steps to learn how to go down the wrong path.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Recognize that fork in the road on the highway of your life. If your relatives are hovering over you, offering unsolicited advice and seem emotionally invested in your decision, you are there.
2. Listen to the unsolicited advice with one ear, listen to your heart with the other, if they are both steering you in the same direction, it is likely the right path. Take the other.
3. Think ahead. Which option will lead to good things in the long run, and which will lead to temporary gratification and a dead end? Dead ends come via wrong paths.
4. Decide precipitously: allowing time for reflection tends to lead to sensible decision-making. Make a snap decision to go down the wrong path.
5. Decide drunk, drugged or desperately tired as altered states lead to bad decision-making, surprise pregnancies, skipping work, changing college majors in midstream and Las Vegas weddings in lieu of higher education.
6. When you find yourself in the dark and scary part of the forest, with your support circle left far behind, you have succeeded in going down the wrong path.
   
   

Tips & Warnings

• If unsolicited advice varies in your circle, go to the least successful, most illogical of your relations and ask what he or she would do in your place. Take the advice.
• Don’t ignore good advice if you want to stay in your relatives’ good graces or be named executor and chief beneficiary of any wills.
• Don’t be silly. Use your brain or the tomes available to assist you in making a good decision when you come to that fork in the road of life. Don’t waste your ephemeral existence bucking the system, only to find yourself living in a mobile home park three decades later, carving statues with a chainsaw and doing tattoos on the side, with a home full of unemployable dependents that chose the wrong path by following your example.