You can skip this post if you have ever:

Eaten biscuits. Been paid in a bag of change. Snuck into ‘the great escape’, a run down and out of business go kart track graveyard. Been disappointed by what they found after sneaking into ‘the great escape’. Worn footwear designed for the practicalities of short-range seafaring. Visited an artist’s studio, uninvited. Discovered a rock quarry in the middle of the town you grew up in, that everyone else seemed to know about already. Dived into the aforementioned rock quarry, off of more-or-less a cliff, into more-or-less freezing water; with several (nearly lifelong) friends, some of whom are intermittently naked, and contemplating running and jumping from conspicuous spots in the rock.

Also if you have been pulled over on your day off, while you were just trying to enjoy the nice car that you work very hard to make payments on. If you have, despite a generational and political ambivalence toward “America”, planned a barbecue on memorial day, and executed it. If you have played bocce. Barefoot. Or dyed your shoes with berries. If you have shotgunned beers. If you have done it voraciously and barfed (on a skateboard!). Or if you have known when to call it a day. If you have ollied, for serious, or if you have ollied for old time’s sake. If you have fed water, as well as promises that ‘it will be okay’ to a friend. If you have, in order to be with your family and friends for longer, made a last minute call to an airline to change flight arrangements, and found yourself met with no fees or resistance.

If you have done these things, there is nothing to see here. Only simple banalities, fast and easy pleasures. If you have not, please review the photographic evidence that follows, and consider our suggestion that the relinquishment of youth (and the particular brand of associated happiness) is totally, one hundred percent, voluntary.