Unsolicited advice is usually bad advice. For example, when I share how much I miss my dog Peaches, several folks suggest I should get a cat. Um, no, thank you. I don't like cats. Cats aren't dogs. (JC)

The night before my first day of first grade, my parents sat me down and warned me, "Never trade your recess snacks with another kid or eat something they give you, because they could be trying to poison you!" Then my mother made me memorize some insults I could hurl and my dad taught me how to throw a punch. What the hell?? This set the stage for 12 years of me always being on my guard and ready for trouble. No wonder I didn't have any friends! (MP)

When I was in high school, I took a career aptitude test. My #1 suggestion was "monk." I also got "rabbi" and "color consultant." The guidance counselor, to my query of "WTF?", said "You're good at math, go into engineering." So I looked up schools for that and CMU was highly ranked. I picked it and was accepted and I was locked in miserably to stuff I wasn't that interested in but was also expensive and hard. I took another career aptitude test at CMU and it said "musician" and "artist" and "writer." When I told my awful girlfriend, she told me I couldn't change my career. So I dumped her. And met my happy life in Pittsburgh anyway! (MC)

My mom gives horrible advice. She hates confrontation and would rather silently seethe until she explodes in a rage. Over the course of my life, she has told me to never let anyone know if they did something to upset me. she would say "Silence speaks volumes." It doesn't. It took me 16 years of therapy to learn how to express myself like a normal sane person. I am still not sure if I can. 😃 (TB)

My brother told me, "Never do anything halfway." So in times when I should have stopped halfway, I went ahead and did the wrong thing. (KW)

I just started a T-shirt printing company and a friend said that I should start bootlegging NASCAR T-shirts to sell at Daytona, Florida during race week. After printing 1,500 NASCAR knockoff shirts and flying to Daytona, we were fined $120 for selling three shirts, then arrested when we tried again, and sold 5 shirts total. Police are given free tickets to the races and they patrol for bootleg shirts. I donated the remaining 1,495 shirts to the local Goodwill. (MD)

The best "bad advice" I ever got was "don't become a photographer," given to me by my mother. She told me that photography was "too expensive." She was half right. (LR)

 

When I first moved to Pittsburgh, one of my mom's co-workers told me to never cross Centre Avenue. 1. I'm pretty sure that's impossible. 2. All the best stuff near my apartment was across Centre Avenue. (EP)

 

Late 1970s: "Don't take typing class in high school, or you'll be stuck in women's secretarial jobs." If I'd known I was to spend the rest of my life at a computer keyboard, such a class would have been very helpful. (AH)