Today’s lesson is a hard one. And like all hard lessons, it shall neither be the first, nor the last time you hear it. But here we go again.
ATTENTION PEOPLE OF THE WORLD. It’s time to get real. Look, there are any number of magical, mythical things that we all wish existed, OK?
Unicorns. Fucking UNICORNS, you guys. How do they work? Unicorns speak to many demographics: they are pretty (yay!), but they also have a lethal weapon strapped to their heads (awesome.) Their powerful and majestic horn has healing powers (snicker) and they loooove virgins (double snicker.) The point is this: unicorns are marvelous. You may marvel at them! But you will not see them. Why? Because they don’t exist.
Fountain of Youth. A real one, not a series of injections that makes your face look like it’s made of flesh-colored mylar balloons and the wax that goes around Bonbel cheese. No, a real fountain of youth, so we could all run around LOOKING like we did at 18, but mercifully not thinking, speaking, or acting like it.
(And thank God, because if you’ve done it, you know that reading your own teenage writing as an adult is the emotional equivalent of waterboarding yourself. In 10 years or so, when today’s teenagers go back and can actually see & hear their younger selves via YouTube/Facebook/cell phone footage, it will be a miracle if any of them survive it. The mass seppuku that will occur may actually be mankind’s extinction event.)
ANYWAY. The POINT BEING: there is obviously nothing as hideous as the musings of a teenager, but we will take their shiny hair and unwrinkled brows. We will happily strip the youthful sparkle from their eyeballs and force it in our own sad, ancient eye sockets. Yes please. We will, or rather we WOULD, but the fountain of youth doesn’t exist.
Other things that do not exist: magic, faeries, Bigfoot, flattering snapshots taken from a low angle, the Tooth Fairy, privacy on the internet, leprechauns… you get the idea. Right? Right. Some things cannot, WILL not, exist. No matter how much we want them to. Which brings us to this:
Not a thing.
Not possible.
DOES NOT EXIST.
No matter how many times we revisit this topic, like a phoenix rising from the ashes (ALSO NOT A REAL THING), it refuses to die, instead being born again and again, sheathing its bold lies in the fine silken robes and matted furs of a rock star.