Given that I have not aged a bit since you first pulled your Pampers off in public, I have no idea how you ever got old enough to go to high school, but that is where you both are this morning. One of you starts today as a freshman, the other as a senior, and I still expect you to refuse to leave home without dragging Pooh Bear along by one leg.

Time cannot have gone by so fast, that much of my hair cannot have gone down the shower drain, you cannot be checking out boys the way you do when you think I am not looking … don’t I wish. So here are some rules for my daughters starting their first and last years in high school today:

. You cannot shop at Victoria’s Secret for back-to-school clothing, no matter what is one sale;

. If you need the glue gun to keep your pants on your hips the pants are cut too low;

. You cannot simultaneously gossip with your friends on the phone, listen to The Twisted Donut Band, and come up with a creative thought worth reproducing on paper for a class assignment. Yes, I got through high school that way, but I was listening to the Beatles, so that was different;

. Do as I say, not as I did;

. Real friends tell an adult they trust when a friend in high school is having big trouble;

. Here is the formula for determining how smart the teen-age driver of a car is: take his/her IQ, divide it by the number of teen-agers in the car, then subtract the combined total of the car speed in mph and the call number of the radio station they are listening to. In most cases, that will produce a driver IQ below zero. That is why you cannot ride with anyone I do not know and trust;

. You can always call for a ride or anything else, no matter when, no matter from where, no matter why – always;

. If I ever hear you rode in a car with a driver who had been drinking I will ground you until you are so old the only boys around will be candy stripers in your nursing home;

. When things look so bad you feel like a teen-age dog drinking out of the toilet bowl of life remember that you always have my pride in you and my love, no matter what. When you hit rock bottom, that is what you are standing on, and it will not give way;

. If some article of your clothing is stretched so tightly across some part of your anatomy that the clothing is shinier than my bald spot, you cannot wear it to school;

. Stay in high school – it is summer camp compared to making six bucks an hour for the rest of your life;

. Respect people who work for six bucks an hour – a lot of them have more class and honor than some presidents we have had;

. Pass up the chance to drink alcohol at parties – being drunk gives you the IQ of your gerbil. Actually, that is unfair to your gerbil;

. Self respect is much sexier than cleavage;

. Don’t smoke. As the ad says, cigarettes suck – the air from your lungs, the beauty and youth from your skin, the clean smell from your hair, and years from your life;

. A year after she starts smoking, a teen-age girl’s skin will show that she smokes;

. If you and your friends light up the night with illegal fun and get busted sometime, call home, but I will leave you in jail for the rest of the night as part of your education;

. Treat your teachers with respect. The number of people in your life who will really work hard to make you a better person is too small to blow any of them off;

. Appreciate the fact that most teachers teach because they think adolescents are worth dedicating a lifetime to without getting paid well for it;

. Standing up for others is way cool. Do it at least once a day, because that kind of character is a muscle that must be developed with constant exercise;

. Respect nerds, because everyone is someone else’s nerd;

. You are never too old or cool for your parents to put a discrete note in your lunch bag;

. We are going to hang on to your Sesame Street lunchbox just in case you need it again;

. Enjoy high school – most adults would pay to have the chance to go back.

P.S: What should I wear when I chaperone your dances, and do you need anything for show and tell tomorrow?

Erik N. Steele, D.O. is a physician in Bangor, an administrator at Eastern Maine Medical Center, and is on the staff of several hospital emergency rooms in the region.