An Open Letter
To All The Kids Out There
R
emember that time in Forrest Gump when he pulled down his pants and we finally got to see Tom Hanks’ cherub-like ass? Well do ya? Of course you do, I know that I certainly do! I miss that. That beautiful feeling of child-like innocence. To be a young carefree boy picnicking in a lush green field with a friend, playing tag on the moist jagged mulch of a playground, or staring up into the clouds and seeing the soft white cushiony buns of a certain simple-minded Alabama boy. I think you’re a kid as long as you yearn to be an adult, and only when you’re of age and no revelation has come. You look back on those times in youth when you heard the slow strung out tones of “Jen-Kneee” whispered into your ear in a teetering southern drawl. All I hear now as I sleep is my dumb cat snoring as the vastness of the eternal void beckons me. About four months ago, I was feeling this emptiness and lack of fulfillment in my life, (something that you happy go lucky younglings wouldn’t understand) and it prompted me to try to rekindle that ember of youth burning in me. So I decided to reenact my favorite scene from a certain, notable film, and winner of Best Picture at the 67th Academy awards (I’m not bragging we all know it’s great). So I took my mother’s 1996 Honda Odyssey out to the old dirt road by my house, got out of the van, threw a my Nike Cortez shoebox filled with
rocks on the gas pedal, and dashed in front of the car to out run it as my Jenny on the cassette tape I made said “Run Forrest Run!” Boy did I run. Though unlike that stoic, slow-witted paragon of athleticism, I was not fast enough to outrun a car. Just the same as Icarus, I flew too close to the sun and promptly fell beneath the front axle of a sporty yet versatile hunk of metallic defeat. That’s when I knew I had no chance to get back that spark of youthful whimsy, or use of my left leg. While I do now wear those stylish leg braces that Forrest sports as a boy, I lack the grace and sheer animalistic power to break free of them via running. That’s why I urge you kids, please, hold onto that joy in your heart as long as you can, because once you let it go it’s gone forever. If my life has taught me anything, it’s that only children have the gift of surviving running in front of cars and making their way out unscathed. As I always made my momma say, “Life if like a box of chocolates” and only a huge dick would try and kill a kid with chocolate.
- Quin “Quigley” Asselin
A subtweet
Dear Kids,