I would like to begin by thanking Robert James Ritchie, aka “Kid Rock,” for the many years of steady employment that he has provided me, the adjective “Kid.” It has been a wild, sleeveless, never-eating-your-vegetables ride. However, after deep reflection and several unsuccessful attempts to exfoliate the cigarette smoke from my pores, I am officially announcing my retirement.
I can no longer, in good conscience, attach myself to a man who looks like he was carved from fifty pounds of thawed-out and smooshed hot dogs and then left in the sun to philosophize about fireworks. I am “Kid.” I am scraped knees, Capri Suns, skateboards, and the blissful ignorance of what the age of consent is in each state. I am not whatever is currently happening north of his goatee.
I don’t want to make it just about looks. Time comes for us all, even for a human pork rind in a fedora. But with all due respect to Mr. Rock (the exact amount of which I leave to the conscience of each individual), he also has the personality of a haunted front-lawn recliner that learned how to sing. When I signed on as his adjective, I assumed a certain level of innocent youthful audacity and a zest for life. What I got instead was a man who loses fistfights in vape shop parking lots and wakes up the next day only to find out that no one cared enough about him to at least move him out of the sun. I realize that doesn’t exactly scream “Adult,” but I also feel like I, “Kid,” just am not the best word to describe Mr. Rock’s way of life.
I tried to stick it out, I really did. No one can accuse me of giving up too easily on my decades-long employer. I told myself that “Kid” could be ironic or like an art performance titled “A Military Flyover Over a Walmart.” But then came the full-body, full-throttle devotion to Donald Trump, a man so elderly he yells at Werther’s Originals to get off his lawn.
Youth is rebellion. Youth is saying “Fuck you!” to authority. Youth is not attaching oneself to a septuagenarian politician like a Russian bug to a golden toilet. It’s not begging to be let into the VIP section of a golf resort, no matter how many children illegally work there.
And yet, even then, I persevered. I told myself that maybe this is satire so advanced that I was simply too young to get it. Then the sauna happened. How did it happen, though, I cannot say. The half-naked bonding session with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man who looks like he was assembled from driftwood and rejected Dark Crystal puppets, was the last straw. There was RFK Jr., in jeans of all things, glistening with sweat like a canned ham in the trunk of a car on a hot summer day, next to my shirtless employer, insisting to be called “Kid.”
No more. There must be some decency left in the universe. Some boundary. Some cosmic force that ensures words still have meaning. In its absence, I choose to stand up and say that “Kid” should not be associated with half-naked, elderly politicians doing lunges in a cedar box while chugging full-fat milk.
So I resign. I wish Mr. Rock all the best in his ongoing journey to mix rap, rock, and country into a beige paste. I hope he finds a new adjective that better reflects his current essence. Perhaps “Pickled” is open to new career avenues. Maybe “Steamed” would like to get in on the free publicity.
But as for me, I am going back to my treehouses. I look forward to picking up my slingshot again and collecting bugs. For I am “Kid.” And I deserve better.
