Crush of the Week.

You Can't Hide From Our Affection, Rollback Kid.

Dear Rollback Runaway,

How's it going, bud?

How are you adjusting to life back in the real world? Good, we hope. It's been a few days since you were pulled from the spider hole behind the diaper aisle in the Corsicana Walmart where you managed to live for two to four days undetected. Hopefully you're having an easy time getting re-acclimated to society.

As shocked as we were when we heard that a 14-year-old managed to live in a 24-hour Walmart store for so long, the story was a lot easier to wrap our heads around once we found out how much thought you put into your scheme. Seriously: You. Thought. Of. Everything.

Of course this wasn't your first rodeo. It's like your mom told the cops, you've done this kind of thing a time or two before. And it totally shows. Like how you were smart enough to steal a bunch of clothes from the men's department and then kept changing up your wardrobe every few hours so the employees wouldn't recognize you — that was a really nice touch.

Or, y'know, how you chose a Walmart to disappear into in the first place, a place you knew would have plenty of food, shelter, clothing, bedding and pretty much everything else from the base level of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Guess that sophomore psychology class wasn't a total waste after all.

Also not a waste of time was all that time you must have spent building pillow forts as a kid, because you, sir, are also an excellent fort-builder, we hear. I mean, according to the newspaper, shoppers were walking right past your “hidden compound” none the wiser. Simply incredible. Per rule No. 1 in the fort-building handbook, you chose an ideal location between a bunch of bulky baby stroller boxes and the back of the drinks aisle, where you astutely cut a hole for grabbing sodas undetected. Genius.

While we're at it, we must applaud your overall dedication to your plan. We're talking here about the fact that you were willing to repeatedly piss yourself while wearing diapers just so you could avoid leaving your makeshift fort for as long as possible. We can't say we ever showed that kind of commitment towards, well, absolutely any endeavor at age 14. Hell, all these years later we're still not really passionate enough about anything in our life to shit ourselves over it.

And so what if a bunch of people are saying you ripped your whole living-in-Walmart thing from the plot of a shitty Natalie Portman film. Compared to you, Natalie's character had it easy. The Walmart she lived in in the film wasn't the 24-hour variety, meaning she had several hours each night to leisurely sleep in the camping section without fear of being caught. Meanwhile, you had to be alert and at the top of your game 24/7 like the true badass you are.

Even though Walmart didn't reward your cunning with a $500 gift card like it did Natalie's character at the end of that stinker, it was still pretty cool they said they weren't going to press charges for all the stuff you stole or destroyed. You lucky bastard.

Hopefully your parents are just as understanding.

In all seriousness, we really do hope things improve for you on the home front, because we think you've got a lot of good going for you. Between your foresight, commitment, discipline, cunning and just plain luck, we think you've got a lot of assets any future employer would be totally stoked to have on their team.

Keep your head up, and maybe give us a call here in a couple of years when you graduate. We're always looking for people like you to join the Central Track team. We can only imagine how much traffic a first-person essay about living in Walmart for a week would have generated for us.

Yours truly,
Cory Graves and the rest of your future co-workers.