The long Awaited Answer to Your Love Questions

Dear Freaky in Florida,

I know exactly what you're going through. This kind of thing happens all the time to people your age. But because you're young the rules are a little different.

First of all James- were you the one that asked to be anonymous? Well, its okay, nobody'll know your last name is Badia-Suarez anyway. Why the hyphenation though? You aren't married yet. We're going to fix that. First off can I say you're very lucky to write in when you did. If you hadn't you would have missed the opportunity of a life-time.

Let's start with puberty. The girl in your story judging by her height is well into the throes of womanhood. You however are what, 4 feet or so? The day will come when that changes for you. You must avoid the most common "kick-yourself-later" problem ever, the problem of ruining a good relationship before puberty because you thought you weren't interested.

All guys have a beautiful woman they've lost because they didn't do anything when they had the chance. She flirted, he ran away. Now post-puberty, that means after, she won't have anything to do with him because he branded himself a coward before things first started rolling. Now the poor guy's stuck with whatever ugly undesirable girls are left over.

My advice: Get while the gettin's good.

The best way to prove yourself to this girl is to do exactly what you don't think you should do. So I'd say, wright her a song and perform it in public. Make sure lots of people are around, that way she'll know you mean it. Instruments are optional although they do pump up your romanticness by about a thousand points so if you can't find a guitar or a clarinet, at least bring a pair of spoons or something. As for lyrics and tune be original. Don't just do that song from The Little Mermaid, I Want More, or whatever it is. Every other guy does that.

For best results use this as a template, or just copy it exactly since its worked on thousands of girls:

and bring a bouquet of flowers: poppies, carnations, ferns, anything works.

So there you go James. You might think its weird right now, but believe me, in a couple more years unless you're a really late bloomer, you'll be thanking me. And maybe that hyphenated name will get another hyphen.

Freaked out in Florida

A while ago the management here at the Ben Brooksby blog put out an open invitation to our readers for questions regarding anything that might be on their troubled minds. After sifting through the mountains of prank mail and false pretenses we've finally recieved one searingly important question all the way from Lone Cabbage, Fish Camp, Florida.

Dear Mr. Brooksby

I had a question for you. I guess I just need some advice. I'm going to be in sixth grade this year but right now its summer so I'm not anything. I don't like school because the people there are morons and there's this girl that I think likes me. Let me explain. I had to give a report on something I found interesting. Most of the other kids did theirs on Justin Bieber and why Brittany Spears should stop marketing her body to people our age, I mean what is she now? 40? So I did mine on tigers because they're awesome. Well this girl in my class decided I'm some kind of tiger enthusiast. Every day she comes up and stands over me( Oh yeah. She's like six feet tall) and asks me, "How are the tigers today?" Then everybody laughs at me because they're afraid if they don't she'll think they're trying to be a hero or something like the time she beat up the deaf kid for not joining in. I don't mind being laughed at so much but I guess she figured that out cuz then she started elbowing me in the face a lot whenever she can, like in the recess line, the lunch line, the bus line, and every time she gets up to go to the bathroom or sharpen her pencil. But I can live with that too. The worst part is that now I'm in a summer program because my teacher thought I was getting beat up at home and she's in it! But the worst of the worst is that yesterday she passed me a note instead of an elbow on the bus. When I got home, I opened it and it said, "Will you be my boyfriend?"

I don't know what to do. Luckily I get a few more days before I have to go back because of the Seventh of July weekend, but I really need to know what to do because if I answer wrong she might kill me, but I don't know which one that would be. Can someone please help? This is an emergency!

-Freaked out in Florida