Truth or Dare

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Dualy Noted: advice about the implicit rules and inner workings of the timeless game "Truth or Dare".

1. Pick Dare.
First of all, I believe that the name "Truth or Dare" is a sort of misnomer. It might as well be called "Coward or Dare" or "Dare or Dare", because it is apparent to everyone that only the weak pick "truth". But the option of "truth" makes it abundantly clear which kids are not contenders for the throne in the realm of Kid-dom (this is pretty much the same as Game of Thrones in levels of brutality and unending evil, but not sketchy bits). This allows you to shun them with haste, and also saves you from making 4-square alliances with weak people.  Picking truth is the equivalent of leaving the water fountain before the requisite number of alligators. If you are willing to be pushed aside, you will probably never get a chance to drink from the water fountain again.
I am surprised that there aren't discovery channel shows about children (similar to the shows about prides of lions), "having entered the territory of the 6th graders, Bobby will be lucky to get out alive."
Plus truth is boring and mostly involves stuff we already knew about you already.
Q: "True or False: you pick your nose and then try to flick your boogers onto Mrs. Martin's desk."
A: "True, I have managed to get them into her coffee cup twice." (quadruple bonus kid points there)

2. Don't wimp out.
Do it. Dares mostly involve drinking blended tuna fish/chocolate syrup milkshakes.
 Once during Spanish Class while the teacher drones on a kid sitting in front of me turns around and brandishes some sort of chili pepper.
"eat it."
"no."
"I dare you." The magic words of challenge.
I stuff it in my mouth and chew. About 30 seconds later I bolt out of the room absolutely without warning, while exclaiming, "ahhhhhothothot!".
As I blitz by the teacher calls out, "the water fountain is not going to help you..."
She was right.
I wrote some standards entitled: "I will not take dares or eat hot peppers in class."

3. Remember, if you have done a dare you hold the power.
Dares are a two way street. If someone dares you to do something and you do it, you have the power to dare them back. If they don't do it they are a complete loser. Worse than the kid that chooses truth. They are anathema. Last year, (keeping in mind that I am 22 years of age) someone dared me to go outside in the pouring rain and lie down in a puddle. Which (of course) I did not fail to do immediately. On re-entering the building I dared them to roll down a soaking grass hill. For some reason they believed that they did not have to do it....must be home school or something. But I helped teach them the ways of dare and grass hill rolling they did go.