Fast Forward

Illustration by Bob AulTo the blond teenybopper in the backseat of the white Jeep who yelled "Stop! Stop!" at me for no reason as I was running in front of Newport Harbor High the other day. The urgency in your voice sounded as if you were getting abducted, so I did stop—until you drove away laughing with your friends, presumably to max out Daddy's American Express at South Coast Plaza.

Based on that brief exchange, let me predict your future: you'll make profligate use of the blond peroxide and blue contact lenses handed out at registration at Orange Coast College; get a meaningless tattoo of a dolphin on your ankle during a drunken spring-break haze; develop a $500-a-week coke habit that includes one tear-filled declaration that you're finally getting your life together by taking a pottery class at the Learning Annex; and you'll marry a rich guy and fake your orgasms until he leaves you for someone far younger. And then you'll know the meaning of "stop."