HOW TO DIE OF EMBARRASSMENT The Rules of This BOOK T his isn't a regular book. You don't have to read the chapters in order. As a matter of fact, they're not even exactly chapters. Some of them are so short that they're really more like paragraphs, or what magazine editors call "boxes." Some are so short that you would need a microscope to see them. After all, it's not as if I had a really eventful childhood. I wasn't the type of kid people looked at and said, "She's going to be the first woman president." My life just went along, probably the way yours does. So what am I going to do for a book? Write things like "Then, next year, I was in third grade"? I don't want to giveyou my whole life story! I just want to give you some little life stories! I want to give you the, you know, meat of the sandwich, not the boring old bread. So if you want to find out dates and history and things, you'll have to wait until I die and then read my autobiography. Which I won't be writing, because it would be too boring. And also because I'll be dead. Some of the names in this book are real, and some are fake. I bet you can guess which kind Miss Stinkyface is. (Real.) If I was describing something that might embarrass people I liked, or might make them feel bad, I didn't want to use real names. On the other hand, I figured it was okay to use real names when I wasn't talking about anything bad. On the third hand, I didn't want to use real names even for people I hated, because what if they turned nice later on? Or got mad and came after me? Sometimes, just to keep things interesting, I used a person's real name in one part of the book and his or her fake name in another. This book only goes up through sixth grade. After that, my life became so embarrassing that writing it down would have caused the pages to burst into flames. Like what about the time I wore a fake-leather pantsuit and big Pilgrim-looking shoes and a ruffled shirt to the mall in seventh grade, and people kept staring at me, and I finally called my mother to bring me some regularclothes to change into in the car? I still live in dread that someday, a person from my teenage past will threaten to tell my husband and kids alllllllllllllll about what I used to be like. If that happens, there won't be any point in my paying the blackmailer. I'll just have to change my name and move away. Text copyright (c) 2011 by Ann Hodgman Excerpted from How to Die of Embarrassment Every Day by Ann Hodgman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.