The Perils of Being Unable to Say No:

1. Unable to Say No to Food

- When one of your best friends is pregnant and goes through mad cravings, you run to the supermarket with her in 50-degree weather.

- You try cucumber sticks with peanut butter, carrot sticks with nutella, goats’ cheese with EVERYTHING.

- You gain more weight than she did during her pregnancy.

2. Unable to Say No to Friends Who Are Leaving

- You go out every night with them.

- You go out every night with them and do mad shit that ensures you look like a wreck in the morning (and throughout the day…week...nevermind), but have a blast doing said mad shit.

- You log in late to work every day for a week as a result of only getting to bed at an hour that is both too late and too early to be sane.

3. Unable to Say (a Loud, Rude, Vociferous) No to Guys Who Ask You Out

- Your polite refusal is taken as a sign of weakness.

- They keep pestering you, even when they have a chickie baby on the side (honestly, am I the only one who sees something wrong with that???)

- They eventually turn into psycho loonies who make up mad shit* about you.

(*not to be confused with the more pleasant, enjoyable mad shit referenced in point 2. This mad shit is all bad and bound to earn someone a kick in the nuts).

4. Unable to Say No to Shopping Expeditions

- You get to a point where you’re scared to look at your bank balance.

- Your shoe collection could make Imelda Marcos say: “Whoa there, a little restraint please!”

- You cannot open your closet door for fear of being buried in the fabric avalanche and not being found for a week.

5. Unable to Say No to Books

- Your overflowing bookshelves make your closet look pristine in comparison.

- When an idiot at a club tries to strike up a conversation using the lame-ass line “You know, the dress you’re wearing is the druidic colour of healing!”, you’re actually in a position to say “Um – no, lameass – that’s green, not purple.”

- You can quote William Shakespeare and Pablo Neruda alongside J.K. Rowling and Charlaine Harris, but no one else gets that and you just sound pompous anyway.

So, lesson learned: the new word that I will wear out, and I mean really wrestle down to the ground and make my bitch, is “No.”

Life’s too much bother otherwise.