Little Brooks

With Oscar season upon us, one thing we can agree on this blog is that we all enjoy a good movie. Last year, I finally got to see The Shawshank Redemption. I mostly held out all of these years because it looked painfully long on cable, but once I saw it, I knew what so many others have been telling me all these years. It was just a great story. A scene in the movie that stayed with me is Brooks being released from prison after 50 years and having to adjust to the world as it was in the 1940s. There was a lot of change the world was going through and for those of you unfamilar check out the video around the 4:00 mark...



Now just imagine if someone were being released from prison trying to catch up with today's everchanging technology? It would drive them mad. With that said, I give my own little short story entitled Little Brooks

After being sentenced in 2001 at the wily age of 18, the now 26 year old Brooks Hatlen III is released from minimum security prison in the winter of 2009. Like his grandfather before him, he finds that life on the outside is quite different than the world he once knew. YouTube, Smartphones, Bluetooth, and googling are words that are quite foreign to this ripened civilian. This is a story of a man dealing with the maladjustment of his new life. This is a story of a man who feels the world has passed him by just like his grandfather once did. This is the story of Little Brooks.

Dear fellas,

“I can’t believe how fast things are moving in the unfathomable year of 2009. If the soaring prices of gasoline weren’t bothersome enough, cars that don’t even run on gas try to run me down now. I guess the world I once knew has a little less gas than it once did. I once saw a cable modem as a child, now they’re everywhere. The internet went and got itself in a big damn hurry. I can barely even Lycos or Ask Jeeves search anymore. Everyone wants me to “google”, but my hands hurt from typing the “Gs” and the “Os.” Sometimes after work I sit by my landline phone and wait for someone to call, but they never do. My once cherished VHS tapes have now been replaced with movies on compact discs and “blue rays.” My old friends back home now play Halo 3 on TVs bigger than a breadbox, but I’m too old for that nonsense. I barely played Halo 1. I don’t think they like me very much. I don’t like it here. The buildings are too big. I like pizza. I’m tired of being Twittered all the time and I’ve decided not to stay. I doubt they’ll kick up any fuss, not for an old dial-up connection like me.

P.S. Tell Little Heywood I’m sorry I put a knife to his balls. Just another day another dollar.”

-Little Brooks

I've been sitting on this silly idea for sketch for awhile now, I think it would be pretty funny, but we are a creative, yet fairly lazy bunch. With that said, Rest In Peace to the real man who played Brooks, James Whitmore and Rest In Peace to you, Little Brooks.