Excerpt: The Epic Tale of Guy

There was once a young man named Guy Smith, which he took as concrete evidence that his parents had no creativity whatsoever. Up until his teenage years, his father often referred to him as “kid,” and although he remembered absolutely nothing from infancy, he was fairly sure that his mother had gone around calling him “baby.” It was like he sort of graduated into the name Guy, a boring obvious person was destined to get an average job, meet an average girl, and die with the words written on his tombstone, “Here lies Guy Smith. We don’t remember anything particular that he did. In fact, we forget who he is.” Guy wasn’t antisocial or anything like that. That would be abnormal. He had friends, once or twice his teacher scolded him for not turning in his homework, that sort of thing. His house was pretty close to the shore, which he supposed made him a little unique from many other seventeen-year-olds in the country, but when every other person around you also lives only a few miles from the shore, it really doesn’t seem like such a special thing.