The Best Things to Do

by Lauren Bans

The best thing to do when your boyfriend tries to break up with you is to plead for one last request: ask him to conduct the conversation in triple negatives. Say, “This is the one thing you can do for me as you don’t not unbreak my heart.” It might not work, especially if you’re into college grads, but it does increase the chances of an inadvertent reconciliation by at least 30 percent.

The best thing to do, though, is to just date a type so hideous he’ll never break up with you in the first place. Like maybe you could look on Match.com for someone who lists “Pumba, but with more 9–11” under Celebrity I Resemble Most.

The best thing to do if you happen to be a time-crunched parent with the goal of teaching your little DNA clafoutis the authoritative nature of the larger world while still providing parental comfort, is boil down nighttime lullabies to their most essential thematic sentence. Like: hush little baby don’t say a word.

Sing the sentence. Turn off lights. Shut the door medium-hard behind you.

The best thing to do with crotchety old people is put them in a hot tub.

The best thing to do if you want to avoid bodily harm is always stay home. Find pleasure in a Lean Cuisine. Perform Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance for your stuffed animals.

Though if you’re stupid enough to leave your house and encounter a violent person in a dark alley the best thing to do is sing Bad Romance while simultaneously wetting yourself. Violent sociopaths loathe performance art.

The best thing to do when fighting a nasty fever is get in the hot tub with the old people you put there two tips ago.

The best thing to do when your wife confronts you with her doubts about Santa Claus’s existence is sit her down and tell her the truth. Santa is dead, but Tom Cruise is real. And if she’s a good girl, Tom Cruise will put a pony in her socks.

The best thing to do in any difficult situation is to smile with teeth and then have each individual tooth smile with all its teeth and so forth and so forth. Especially if you’ve done one of those Crest Whitening kits lately. You’ll blind your enemies! And your lover! Then you can stop incessantly whitening your teeth for that guy.

Previously: 50 Shades of Grey.

Lauren Bans is an editor at GQ.