Man, What We Wouldn’t Give

Man, What We Wouldn’t Give to Be Fourteen Again

It was, as you can imagine, a great deal of fun. One of the junior editors—let’s just call him “Chip”—managed to get a guy who was searching for food in a local dumpster named “David Lee Roth” to entertain for the evening. We gave him three doughnuts and he played for hours. In fact, we had to hand him a jelly-glazed in order to stop him.

Naturally, the crack young staff picnic was a fete to remember—a prandial delight, if we must say so ourselves. There were all kinds of fine foods on display. Interestingly, a large number of the staff brought chips, and thus we were left with all kinds of leftover snacks.

One of the senior editors of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—brought his son Vincent to this festive get-together. Vincent, or Vince, as he prefers not to be called, is a fourteen-year-old middle-school student. As the picnic proceeded apace, various members of the crack young staff watched Vince with affection—Platonic affection, of course.

Sure, Vince could easily be stuffed in a knapsack. But that wasn’t what we were thinking. Or at least most of us weren’t thinking about this.

Rather, spying the playful Vince as he dropped ketchup on his mother made us collectively pine for our younger days. Sure, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are young, but, next to fourteen-year-old Vince, we were a passel of superannuated fuddy-duddies. In fact, we were the kinds of guys who used passé phrases such as “a passel of superannuated fuddy-duddies.” And that was officially not groovy. Man.

This led us to offer a collective sigh of regret. How could we have let those years go by! It seems like just yesterday that the Muslim world was rife with terrorism and corruption! (Oh, wait: That was yesterday.) As they say in folk music circles, whither have all the flowers gone?

For a brief moment, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” collectively wished that we could be fourteen again.

Just think, dear reader, of how great that would be: Math homework; dressing like everyone else; being bullied. And, thanks to our friends on the political Left, fourteen-year-olds can now blithely dress in thongs and get all the free condoms they want at school. Gee, being fourteen is an awful lot like being in college.

But then it struck us, dear reader: If we were fourteen again, there would be no way that we could run “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly.” After all, what fourteen-year-old knows what the word “feculent” means?