Plastics - Emily Salamanca

              "Sometimes when people ask you a question of whether or not they should do something, all they really want is to be reinforced to do that thing." That was the general direction of the advice, if it can even be considered advice. I read it when I was about 7 or 8 in a Reader's Digest Magazine. It had never occurred to me before. An example of this is when a friend comes up to ask me whether they should skip school the next day because of a big test or quiz and they already were feelings bad, or whether they should just tough it out and stick through it. Although it would benefit me if my friend did come to school, I understand that they probably just want to have someone else justify their need for a mental health (or even physical health) day off. This piece of advice has changed my life because I stopped dolling out advice that was unnecessary and didn't support what my friend really wanted. Similarly, another piece of advice I received from the same article (God bless it...) was that when a person is sad or angry or filled with intense feeling, it is their time to talk not yours. If a friend is happy because they scored really well on a test, let them be full of themselves. Let them cry and scream and jump and yell. And finally, the other piece of advice was just to generally shut up. Stop saying superfluous comments and just be direct and kind. Still working on that.