Forty Questions My Twelve-Year-Old Self Would Have for Me Today

Today I realized that I’d completely failed to make good on a promise I’d made as a twelve-year-old to drive a car with the license plate “BORT.”

(Context, if necessary, but then why are we friends?)

I thought this was a genius idea at the time, and on some level I still do. However, the notion completely fell by the wayside, and I couldn’t help thinking about how twelve-year-old me would have been disappointed in what I was doing with myself two decades later, Simpsons-related activities and otherwise.

Here, then, is how I imagine getting interviewed by twelve-year-old me would go.

1. Is The Simpsons still on?
2. Do you write for it?
3. Why not?
4. Did you, like, try and they said no or what?
5. Do you write for a newspaper now?
6. Why are you laughing?
7. Well, who do you write for then?
8. What’s a blog?
9. How much do you get paid to write for your blog?
10. Then what else do you do?
11. You spend how much time gardening?
12. To what end?
13. Why not just let the plants grow that actually want to grow and give up on the ones that don’t?
14. How many dogs do you have?
15. Are they, like, on order somewhere?
16. Do you still play video games every day?
17. Why not, if you still like them?
18. Does your wife or girlfriend or whatever not let you play video games or something?
19. Why are you laughing?
20. Since when?
21. Then why is this news to me?
22. No, what about Perfect Tommy in Buckaroo Bonzai?
23. No, what about John Wesley Shipp on the original Flash series?
24. No, what about Dolph Lundgren in Showdown in Little Tokyo?
25. So, like, completely or just sometimes?
26. And you do all the… things?
27. Wait, what is that?
28. And that’s normal?
29. With a butt?
30. On purpose?
31. Are butts in the future different somehow?
32. Like, was there an advancement in hygiene or something in the future that made this less gross?
33. Goddamit, why are you laughing?
34. Well, what’s it like being a nerd in the future?
35. Really, Green Arrow got his own TV show?
36. In an expanded superhero universe?
37. Does Wonder Woman have her own show yet?
38. Why are you laughing?
39. Is Princess Toadstool still the only playable female character in Mario Kart?
40. They call her what now?