Sorry, but Fruit Gushers are water now

As someone who gets bullied by teens on a regular basis, I am keyed in to the hip youthful trends of today. My experience in the teen scene, coupled with a truly reckless degree of self-confidence, has allowed me to stumble upon truths that are otherwise overlooked. Scientists can weigh test tubes and spit on plants as much as they want, but their methods will never clue them in to the fact that all teens, as a monolithic population, hate the environment. The planet has simply lost the hip sheen it once wore like a badge of honor.

The fact that all teens view the planet as an extension of their uncool stepdad should come as no surprise to anyone. Although the planet was one of the coolest things a teen could get their hands on in the ‘60s, Earth—like practically everything else that was hip at the time—has steadily declined in popularity since the invention of the Internet. In a survey conducted by me from the window of a moving car, most teens are so indifferent to the planet today that they would ignore a man yelling “WHAT ABOUT EARTH” from a 2000 Honda Accord. Truly disheartening.

With the blame solely resting on teens for the gradual destruction of the environment, we adults are left with one question: How can we make Earth cool again? Failing that, how can we make environmentalism rad with the Teens of Today?

There are many methods used by teens to desecrate this big trash heap of ours, but the most popular method I witnessed in my extensive research was water waste. As teens bullied me day in and day out, I noticed that most of them loved throwing water balloons even more than they enjoyed vaping in my direction or dancing at me. Despite my feeble cries and attempts to reach them by sitting backwards in a chair, I was subjected to a barrage of hundreds of water balloons every minute. Convincing teens to reduce their water waste through hip marketing is quite possibly our last chance to save the environment before we are rent asunder by a planet on its knees.

I could fill my word count by inserting several rhetorical questions here like any good desperate Lawrentian has for a paper nearing its deadline. I could act as if I have no solution to this solely teen-induced global warming, but my irrational confidence tells me that I have an answer to all problems. I also fear that asking questions would leave an opportunity for teens to roast me on the social medias, and my heart simply cannot take another day of getting dragged. Fellow elderfolk, we need to make conservation cool by bringing back the most rad brand of all time: Fruit Gushers.

At one point, Fruit Gushers were the best option for anyone hoping to turn their head into a watermelon or bunch of grapes. The current state of grocery stores across the nation show that Fruit Gushers are in higher demand than they have ever been. My dad, who totally works as the Big Boss of Supply at the Grocery Store Company, says that every grocery store orders enough Fruit Gushers to fill the entire store, from floor to fluorescents. Despite this careful anticipation of market trends, every store is subject to a daily stampede of teens tearing through the shelves and pillaging their supply. What you see on the shelves at noon is the collection of leftover stock the stores put out after their Gusher supply is decimated. One of the reasons that the brand is such a hot commodity, in my opinion, is that it has managed to avoid the imposition of uncool messaging by business adults.

Teens might be about as dumb as any other segment of the American population, but they will never fall for any sort of Hip Adult marketing strategy like new packaging or mascot messaging. Adding a new flavor of Fruit Gusher that supposedly represents a clean environment will never fool those gremlins. The best way to save the world from the human forces on the environment is to convince all those water-wastin’ teens that the only acceptable source of water is their beloved Fruit Gusher.

Convincing teens at large that the only usable “water” comes from the liquid center of America’s favorite elongated hexagonal bipyramid will no doubt have an immediate effect on the environment. First and foremost, it will prevent teens from exposing their noxious fumes to flora and fauna. Any adult with lasting olfactory memories of middle school will immediately understand how such teen airspaces can be lethal for a fragile ecosystem. With all teens shuttered in their homes, bent over a colorful workstation to extract liquid from the Gushers, trees will be freed to grow in the beautiful, uncontaminated airspace found next to America’s favorite factories and material processing plants. The intensive process of liquid extraction from Fruit Gushers will also give teens more to do, thereby reducing their ability to litter or generally vandalize the environment.

The added difficulty of obtaining “water” will force teens to limit their water consumption, just as the intensive process of making marzipan forces adults to limit the number of times they eat garbage in a given week. The Teens of Today will be much less likely to take their patented 80-minute showers if they are forced to continually crack open handfuls of Fruit Gushers to keep the water supply going. The same principle applies to their water balloon use. Some of the lazier teens —i.e., all of them—might even resort to throwing entire Gushers at me instead of water balloons. This would provide me with a much-appreciated snack as I continued to scurry on to my business deals in the Big City Rat Race.

Some of you might be wondering what would happen to the preexisting sources of water in the rest of the world. Water is great for us Wrinkléd Persons, so cutting off the supply entirely would never work. Teens can start using regular water once they prove that they can handle it on their twentieth birthday.

Teens will be unwilling to resort to Fruit Gushers Water if they see an easier option available to them. I am no scientist, but I think covering every major body of water with a large tarp could do the trick. Teens have a disproportionate amount of trouble with identifying different kinds of fabric until they reach adulthood, so tasteful tarps might trick them into thinking that someone has left their extensive supply of linens unattended.

Any old person worth their dentures knows that teens are to blame for every problem in society, and the slow-escaping death rattle of the planet is no exception. Clearly, humans aged 13-19 are the sole cause of climate change, and it is time for us, the oppressed minority of humans aged 20-infinity, to take action. Fruit Gushers need to be named the sole water source for all teens and any other act of environmental conservation carried out on other fronts is a complete waste of time.