The strangest thing happened today, one of my characters jumped right out of the darned book and demanded I let him write a post for my blog. Um, okay. Rather than fight him, I just let Brady do what he wanted to do. So without further ado, here’s Brady Evans’s guest post about a topic that’s very dear to his, um, heart.

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Hey, what’s going on? My name is Brady, and I’m here to school you on what it takes to be popular—but more importantly, what it takes to stay popular.

Here’s the deal, you have to be hot in order to be popular. So if you are fat, pimply, or otherwise awkward to look at, stop reading this post and go study for your science test. There’s no hope for you. What, to harsh? Well, at least I’m not afraid to tell you the truth, and you shouldn’t be afraid to accept it. Unless you enjoy wasting your time…

Yeah, anyway, now that we’ve gotten rid of the freaks, let’s continue. Congratulations, you are one of the “pretty people” as my GF Ronnie would say. You may have what it takes to be popular.

Next question, how good are you at sports? Are you on any JV or varsity teams? If you are good-looking and athletic, then we can safely assume you are already popular. Not too sporty? There’s still a chance you could be popular. If you’re a guy, you better be damn smooth—I mean, you either need a hot car, a hot girlfriend, or possibly a motorcycle. If you’re a girl, you need to have nice T and A, or just a tight A, or nice bouncy Ts. Hey, I am just being honest with you, people!

So next on the checklist is brains. You can’t be stupid, but you can’t be too smart either—or at least you can’t show off your geek muscle on a regular basis. All A’s is okay, but sitting in the front of the classroom, raising your hand every time the teacher asks a question or any of that other pet stuff is not acceptable. Well, unless, said teacher is super hot, and your motivations aren’t… purely academic.

See, it’s not too hard to be popular once you get past that first hurdle. Of course, you can’t have uber freakish tendencies, like you can’t wear eye make-up if you’re a dude or talk to yourself in the hallways or listen to stupid emo music, but provided you aren’t the self-sabotage type, the last thing you need to do is defend your popularity. What do I mean by “defend your popularity?”

Think about it, if everyone was popular than being popular wouldn’t be too special, now would it? As a member of the high school elite, it’s your job to decide who can or can’t be your friend. It’s also your job to remind the plebes that you are on top and they are just grimy gum under your shoe—especially if you fear they may unjustly gain popularity one day.

For example, Alex Kosmitoras, ugh, the kid’s a freak, walking into school with that stupid red and white stick of his, sucking up to the Chem teacher, crushing on that ugly fat girl. Yeah… So why do I care? Why do I pay him any attention? Well, if we let him ascend the ranks, he could change the criteria, and then several other unbelonging losers would infiltrate our popular core. You see the problem?

And let’s face it, his blindness could easily give him an edge since the sympathy factor could play major with some of the touchier-feelier cheerleaders. And, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… he actually passes the first criterion. I mean, hey, I’m all man, so it’s not like that, but I see the way chicks look at him some times, and, okay, his one friend, Sharpie or whatever, she is totally hot. And well, yeah, I just gotta keep him down, you know?

So hate on me for being the one to take on the burden of keeping our upper social strata pure. I guess I just believe in something, and is that so wrong?