School Survival Guide 1

Welcome to our School Survival Guide, a brief series of informative articles about making the most of your scholastic experience! We thought we'd start off with a bang, so to speak, by tackling one of the most nerve-wracking issues of young life: attracting the opposite sex (or same sex, if that's your deal). In a time of raging hormones and social awkwardness, love can be a horrifying, gory minefield of heartbreak and rejection. Luckily, we've asked some of Gaia's best-loved characters for their invaluable advice.

First, a few of Gaia's most eligible bachelors share their hottest tips on how to score a date with the hottest girl in school:

Johnny Gambino: My general strategy for picking up ladies is to be tall, ruggedly handsome and the world's richest man. If you've got those three things going for you, my friend, you're set! BWAHAHAHAHA!

Edmund: To all the teenaged schoolboys out there, I say this: at your age, you have absolutely nothing to offer a lady; you're at the most awkward and ungainly point in your life, you've got no confidence, you dress terribly and, let's face it, you probably don't smell particularly good. I recommend that you concentrate on your studies now, and leave the "bird-dogging," as Johnny likes to call it, for a more appropriate time.

Ian: Why are you asking me? I don't know, I guess my general strategy if I like a girl is to breathlessly pine for her for about three years and then eventually grow out of it and kind of fall into a life of hermetic solitude where the only person I talk to is my cat. Is that what you want to hear, man? Go ask Liam or something.

Liam: Here's what you do, kids: you just go right up to a girl and be like, "hey," and then she's like "hey," and then you start talking and maybe roll up the sleeves to give her a little peep at the pythons, then some stuff happens and pretty soon you're kissing her and whatever. I don't know, dude, it always worked for me when I was in school. The important thing is to remember her name, because you might need to know it later.

Gino Gambino: Hm. Well, I never really went to public school, but... I guess my dad always says you have to be direct, so maybe I'd go up to a girl at school and say, "uh, excuse me, y'know, ma'am, but you seem to have dropped your purse," and then maybe she says "my purse is right here in my hands," and then, sheesh, I don't know... then it's checkmate, I guess, so you just walk away.

And now, a few comments from some of Gaia's loveliest ladies about how to turn your crush into romantic reality:

Moira: Be direct! Just be confident and believe in yourself, and walk straight up to a boy and say, "listen, creep, if you look at me one more time I'm going to slap the taste out of your mouth." Oh, you're talking about if you like a boy? Yeesh, have you seen high school boys? It's pretty dire...

Sasha: Listen, girls: you don't have to go out of your way to get boys. Boys have to go out of their way to get you. Be confident! Just take a look in the mirror every morning and say "gosh, I'm so freaking cute," y'know? Oh, yeah, it helps if you're totally freaking cute, obvz! If not, uh oh, I've got no advice I guess.

Agatha: When I was a girl, if you wanted to court a boy in school you'd leave a ripe nectarine on his desk, and then he'd have to ask everyone in the class who left it for him. But here's the game: everyone in the class has to answer his questions with lies, so the boy would have to sort of triangulate from that-- and if he didn't figure out who left it for him before the nectarine went bad, you'd never be allowed to speak to him again and your parents would have to pay his parents a dowry. Does it still work like that? Oh, my, I hope it still does.

Sam: I was pretty shy in school, so I never talked to boys much. I will tell you this, though: boys love a girl with brains! Not me, obviously-- I'm just saying they love a girl with brains. A specific one. Her name was Jenny McPhee and she was really smart and pretty and dated every boy I ever had a crush on. Even to this day, she still does. I still go by her place and slash her tires every month, like clockwork.

Natasha: What you have to understand about guys that age is that they're totally oblivious to everything. If you like a guy, you can flirt and wink and drop all the hints you want, but they're gonna have no idea what you're talking about until you finally get way too wound up and depressed about it and you write them some long, creepy poem and then they show all their friends and you've pretty much embarrassed yourself out of commission forever. So, yeah...

'''Think you know better than Liam when it comes to love? Feel free to share your own romantic advice in this thread. And if you need more terrible advice and awkward counsel, stay tuned for the next School Survival Guide, coming up soon!'''