1st place in Derby #113: Harvest, with 1274 votes!

“I know how you feel, son. You don’t want to do it, I understand, I really do. I remember when I was your age, and my old man took me out for my first day on the job. And boy, my old man—well, you remember Grampa, right? He was… well, he was from a different generation. He was tough to please, you know?

“But sometimes I think I needed that. He was hard on me. Really hard on me. Nothing was ever good enough for him. I had to grow up fast, son. I had to be a man, maybe before I was ready. But I learned. I toughened up. I didn’t have it easy, but in a way I think that was his gift to me.

“Because see, the world is not easy. You have to grit your teeth and bear it, son. And you have to do things sometimes—a lot of the time, really—that you don’t like. Look at this turtle. You don’t have anything against this turtle. I don’t have anything against this turtle. This turtle doesn’t deserve what’s coming to it. But it’s coming. That’s just how it is. That’s what we do. That’s what we have to do. It’s what you’re going to have to do.

“I wonder if I didn’t make things harder for you by trying to let you be a kid, the way your Grampa never let me be a kid. You’re sensitive. I couldn’t be like that when I was your age. And I wonder if that’s going to make this tougher for you. I wonder if, in a perverse sort of way, your Grampa’s severity with me… I wonder if that was a mercy he did me. Miserable old, hateful, hard-hearted, brutal bastard that he was.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah, son?”

“Whatever happened to Grampa, anyway?”

“Ha! Ha! Oh, that’s a funny story! ...Uh, maybe for another time.”

Wear this shirt: to remind everyone around you that our time on this planet is fleeting, and life is fragile.

Don’t wear this shirt: to your job at Hospice, you sick freak.

This shirt tells the world: “Just call me la petite Morty.”

We call this color: Baby Culler Navy Color

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