When I think back to advice I’ve been given, I have to say the best is this, given by a high-school teacher of mine: “Remember, everyone’s a loser.”

It sounds preposterous. “Me? A loser?” say the girls in the sex pants, the ones who put on eyeliner to go to the SERF. “Me?” echo the guys who walk like they have whole grapefruits in their armpits. “Me?” say the bohemian ones who shake their dreads at bourgeois society, and the buttoned ones whose Harvard MBAs will redeem their UW-Madison degrees.

“Them?” say the rest of us.

Yes.

Pick a person at random on this campus — hell, in the world — and I dare you to prove they are not a loser. You will fail. Everyone has some yawning gap, some unbelievably stupid thing they’ve done, some habit that would make Ignatius J. Reilly turn away in disgust, some passion beamed straight in from Neptune. Maybe they write racy letters to Jonathan Taylor Thomas, or clean out their ears with a spoon handle. Maybe they — well, insert your own Pathetic Geek Story. I know I can think of plenty, which I’m not about to share.

The point is that I believe no one on this earth is without the kind of glaring flaw that, once uncovered, slots them firmly into the loser category. Not Julia Roberts. Not Gandhi. Not that hot girl in your marketing class. And especially not you.

Since everyone has the same status, it all comes down, then, to how well you hide it. If you knock over the same chair every time you set foot in your power lecture, you’re a little more exposed than if you shut the bathroom door, turn on the fan for sound-masking and break out the ear spoon. Some people, like the armpit-grapefruit squad, do an admirable job of passing for suave.

But is passing necessary, or even healthy? I would say not.

For one thing, these people’s covers have been blown. There’s no such thing as suave. Give it up. Besides, if you suppress yourself too well, you’ll get ulcers. Very unpleasant.

So what I’m calling for, in the interests of honesty and ulcer avoidance, is a worldwide embrace of loserhood — an acceptance of our most laughable flaws, an acknowledgement that all the carefully sculpted facades are lies on the order of “No, your butt looks fine in that” or “I’ll just have one beer.” Imagine how wonderful that would be, to dispense with acting, to make the intricate social strata tumble down like a game of Jenga.

Everyone’s an admitted loser. The aspiring models and the Dungeons & Dragons players, the activists and the ASM members, the people dancing on the bar and the ones cowering on the sofa — everyone.

“Oh, sure,” you scoff. “You just want to drag everyone down to your level.”

Well, yes. But only because if they were honest, everyone would be there already. That, I think, was the point my high-school teacher was trying to make: that there is no reason to feel inferior. That if everyone is on the same level, and some people have traits of obvious worth, then the others must have traits of equal worth somewhere, or else the balance would be destroyed. The beautiful and the not-beautiful, the conspicuously talented and the hapless — everyone is able to contribute.

Call me a dreamer, but I think the lifelong loser types will have a special role in the new world order. Someone, after all, will have to show the so-called “cool” people the ropes, keep them from slipping into their old suave ways. Guides will be needed, mentors, givers of seminars.

In the one exception to this egalitarian paradise, I will be a goddess.