Toto the absolute dude

I however do not have a good blanket for this

Original

So when I was very, very little (think roughly 2-3 years old), I couldn't consistently pronounce 'Charlie,' so my name for myself was 'Awie/Arie.' I also was right at that stage of development where I was starting to develop, like, an inkling of how religion worked through osmosis. I also also was figuring out the concept of a 'sibling.' To a degree. Pets I had already figured out ages ago (we had, at the time, a big sweet old cat, and our neighbors had a cockatoo). So, according to my parents, my first ever independent prayer went 'Dear Jesus, Arie need baby sister, Arie want baby brother, Arie bird.' And that was that: my big three life priorities, in order.

Anyway, a few months later my mom got pregnant with what we would later learn was my little sister. And kind of as they were explaining the whole concept of pregnancy et cetera to me they decided to ask my feedback on baby names. And so I had mentioned a few girl names, and my parents went, "Okay, but Charlie, what if it's a baby boy?"

"It's not. That's my baby sister."

"But what if it is a baby brother? Don't you want to help pick out his name?" "'Him.'" And I refused to budge from that answer. Apparently it just was not worth even thinking about in my mind that it even might be a boy.

As previously mentioned, I wound up being right about that one.

So, several years after that, my parents pulled me aside and explained that my mom was pregnant again. And without missing a beat, my first question was "Can I share a bunk bed with him?" Because bunk beds were the coolest thing ever and obviously it was going to be a boy.

(Their reaction was very much 'oh boy, here we go again.')

Anyway, several months later, we were driving back from the ultrasound appointment where it had just been confirmed that, yes, that was my baby brother. And I (very smugly) asked from my car seat in the back,

The best ones have advice on decor, how to select high-quality furniture, childrearing, fashion, etc--from a contemporary perspective, and the things the authors feel the need to clarify vs the wild shit that will just casually mention like it's something everyone knows and agrees on is REALLY revealing of the culture and how it's shifted.

And while a lot of the advice is WILDLY bigoted or just outright funny, you'd be surprised how much of it is...just genuinely timeless, and shockingly compassionate.

They ALSO, as a writer, have INVALUABLE resources--because, again, they're talking about things that are so MUNDANE that a lot of the time nobody really sat down to formally document what normal, everyday people thought or cared about--because that's boring! But a book written to provide advice and information to, say, a young woman who's never run her own home before? You can fully expect an entire chapter dedicated to The Types Of Oven, and which features are useful and worth spending money on, and which features are a huge hassle to clean and a waste of space, and what to spend that money on instead.

And like. As a writer who frequently works in the 1800s? Fuck inflation calculators, this is the kind of thing I need. This is absolutely priceless.

Now that being said.

My current favorite 'etiquette guide' in the world is actually like....70% purely practical advice, written by a gentleman the groupchat has affectionately dubbed History's Most Autistic Man In The World, and thank god they didn't have Aderall back then

Because the AuDHD is strong in this one and as a result, in addition to the deeply practical and useful everyday reference points, we also have: