Book excerpt: This is not a HOW TO book, it's a how NOT TO book. My dad up in heaven had a favorite saying: Alittle bit of knowledge is dangerous. Truth be told, sometimes a little knowledge is all we really need. As a lawyer for thirty-plus years, I've seen young people from different neighborhoods and different upbringings repeatedly make the same wrong choices and take the same wrong turns, literally devastating their futures. If someone had just given them a little bit of knowledge, they could've avoided ever seeing the inside of a lawyer's office. I wrote this manual to provide a map to navigate teenagers and twenty-somethings through unexpectedly dangerous waters and guide them around the occasional iceberg. I am arming them with just a little knowledge to help make important and crucial choices, which can hopefully change the course of their lives. It takes a village, but in the famous words of Bob Marley,