A Girl's Guide to Surviving a Modern Halloween-Season Killer

Every girl knows how to survive a classic horror movie slasher. Don't have sex at the lake house. Don't run in heels. Don't answer the phone. Always assume THE KILLER IS IN THE HOUSE! Don't be a black man, etc.

These days, though, horror movies are hardly ever about one man killing a sexy group of teenagers. With the advent of advanced technology and the popularity of the bullying issue, movies have turned their focus to manipulative, game playing teens and killer tech gadgets.

As a result, the rules have changed. Fortunately, I have time to watch a lot of TV, and I have learned them. Now, I will teach them to you.

1. Know your friends
If you are a hot girl, and you hang out with a group of other hot girls, chances are one of you is the uber-bitchy queen bee. If this describes you, congratulations; you are the bad guy. Enjoy destroying your friends' lives.

If you are not the queen bee, make sure you know who is! This girl is going to aide other members of the community in killing you. The other members of the community will be hot, slightly older guys. They will visibly want to have sex with your popular friend, even though the age difference is borderline creepy. It will be very obvious.

Unfortunately, there is a slight chance this bitch will not help some attractive, skeezy men murder you. If this is case, she will instead manipulate you to believe someone is trying to murder her. It will be very believable because you would like to murder her. However, this is very dangerous because it will distract you from real threats.

Fortunately, the solution to both of these deadly scenarios is the same: keep the queen bee extremely drunk at all times. Help her develop crippling alcoholism. If she is super popular, she already carries a flask in her purse. Make sure it is always filled. Carry water bottles that you purport to fill with vodka. Fill them with water. Get "drunk" with the queen bee.

Drunk people suck at planning. They are especially bad at sneaking around old houses waiting to scare you. They're bad liars. I could go on and on, but trust me, just keep that girl wasted.

2. Know your enemies
A lot of people in your school hate you. If you think you are very popular, this is especially true.

You need to know who hates you most because they are involved in a sick plot to make your life Hell before quietly killing your ass.

Is there anyone who you teased relentlessly when you were younger? (Bonus points if you have ever physically crippled a peer.) How about a girl who was in love with a boy you slept with? Whose prom date did you steal? Did you beat someone out for class president even though she works much, much harder than you?

These are the kind of people who secretly plot your murder all day. Be aware of all of them. Back in the day, one of them would have snapped and begun murdering your friends one by one. These days, you do not have the luxury of that kind of predictability.

Your enemies will almost certainly team up and develop a plan to drive you crazy before they finish you off. You need to watch them like a hawk. Be especially wary of odd pairings. When people who hated each other start hanging out, and their only link is a hatred for you, prepare for the crazy, anonymous text messages to begin. Which brings us to...

3. Do not use technology
Best case scenario, technology plays into your (fri)enemies' evil plans. They use cell phones, the internet, and surveillance equipment to bring about your demise.

Worst case scenario, technology itself fucking kills you. If you hear about a movie that causes weird things to happen to anyone who watches it, don't. Never listen for ghosts in the static on your radio.

If your cellphone starts doing anything weird, never touch another phone again. Watch out for sentient cars and appliances. Do not put a high-tech panic room in a house that is already haunted. You know what? Just don't buy a high-tech house to begin with.

We all know that technology will ultimately bring about the end of the human race, but you have the tools to prevent it from killing you, now. Be smart. Be aware. Be a hermit.

On Being Sober in Bars

When I have occasionally ventured into public since beginning my great pregnancy adventure, there is one question that basically everyone has asked me: How do you like not being able to drink at all?

The truth is, it has been incredibly easy for me. When there is something as important as the health of your child at stake, there is not even a thought process involved aside from, "I am pregnant; I cannot drink." That's it. The simple fact that something truly important is at risk makes it very easy to abstain, even in "drinking establishments".

I have fortunately discovered that I have some great friends whom I enjoy spending time with when I am sober, even when they are drinking heavily. Case in point: Last night I played designated driver for my longtime friends Sarah and John, who moved here just a few days ago, so that they could get properly New Orleans smashed on a Sunday night. Even though they were getting pretty drunk and I was not, I had a wonderful time just hanging out and talking with them. Our friendship is strong and complex enough to overcome little obstacles like a considerable difference in sobriety. It's nice to have friends like that, and I love them wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, along with that happy discovery has come the realization that I have some friends, at least in name, who I cannot stand to be around unless everyone in the room is hammered, practically.

"College age" people tend to build relationships with their peers while drinking, often to excess. In fact, in recent history, I have considered individuals who I have never even seen sober to be friends. These are people who I have hung out with on countless occasions, and whose secrets I am privy to, but whose sober mannerisms would be completely foreign to me. It seems sort of crazy even writing that down, but I spent my party years in a drinking town, and such are the consequences.

I suppose some drinking buddies are meant to be nothing more than that. Some people have golf buddies, fishing buddies, or even sex buddies. I happen to have some buddies with whom my connection does not go any deeper than our mutual love for jager bombs and other fun shots. And that's ok.

Until it's not. Until I am necessarily sober for nine months, minimum, and suddenly find that the basis for some of my friendly relationships has been extremely tenuous. It is not possible for me to tell someone whom I have recently considered a friend that, to sober me, their obliterated company is borderline tortuous. I am just not that kind of person. So, I guess the next step is to gently and considerately weed out the relationships that have turned out to be, for lack of a better word, shams.

I think that part of growing up is to select the relationships in your life that are healthy and beneficial to your growth and nurture them while moving away from the ones that are not particularly deep or meaningful. At this stage in my life, that apparently means saying goodbye to some of my drinking buddies.

I wish I could have taken the time to learn some of their middle names or maybe see where they lived, but it's time for me to move on.