I realize I’ve been writing a lot about Disney, lately. Again, I will simply reference the fact that I’ve a three-year-old daughter and she loves the Disney Channel. Enough excuses, though.

I’ve been watching Peter Pan a lot, and one thing keeps getting to me. At the end of the film, Captain Hook gives the boys an ultimatum: Join my crew or walk the plank. To sweeten the deal, he throws in the offer of a free tattoo (on a side note, I can remember finding this offer sinister when I was a little kid in the 80s; now I think mostly “sweet, free tattoo!”). There’s a whole song and dance routine involved, to boot. The boys, for their part, are really very eager to join until Wendy, the perennial stick-in-the-mud, spoils the whole thing.

Here’s my question, though: Isn’t joining Hook the Lost Boys’ best career option? I mean, what else are they possibly going to do with their lives? Consider the facts:

The Lost Boys’ Resume

No one pictured here is ever going to college. Additional: two out of three pictured will probably become a felon.

Education: None

Work Experience: None

Skills: Tracking, Fighting, Hunting, Vandalism, Ambushes, Traps, Swimming, Climbing, taking orders from Pan

References: Cannibals and Aboriginal Islanders

Personal Objectives: To fight, lounge around, have fun, and go on adventures.

Job Listing: Pirate

Wanted: Courageous individuals wanted to leave civilization behind and sail to distant shores for the purposes of shaking down local populace for spare change, treasure, and supplies. Occasional battle against same requested, as well as boarding actions and naval engagements on the high seas. Must be able to take orders, work well in violent masculine pecking order, and adapt to and embrace extreme hazing rituals.

Required: Mean disposition, affinity for violence, cavalier attitude towards human life and property. No education preferred  ability to swim preferred but not necessary. Proper recruits will show limited discipline unless threatened with physical violence as reprisal.

If interested, contact James Hook, Captain.

Pictured: Lost Boys + 10 years

Let’s be honest, folks –  it’s a Lost Boy’s dream job. Hell, its significantly more exciting than Neverland, anyway. I mean, how many times can you have fake battles with the same damned Indians? Yeah, you’re a perpetual child, but aren’t pirates, to a very large extent, also pretty childish? It’s hardly a mature profession, anyway; it’s thugs in boats stealing stuff. The Lost Boys would train up pretty damned quickly, plus they’d love the boozing, tattoos, and blood sports without a doubt. In the absence of any other reasonable occupation and the inevitable boredom that would have to accompany an eternity in Neverland, there really isn’t much of a downside. Besides, Hook is, by all accounts, at the top of his game. It’s like getting in with Goldman Sachs right out of school (actually, it’s disturbingly like that).

Heck, for all we know, Hook’s presence in Neverland might just be an elaborate recruiting scheme. Where could he find better replacements for a job that, given his penchant for shooting his employees, has got to have a pretty good turnover rate? I mean, granted, the guy starts to lose his marbles when that punk Pan cuts off his and hand throws it to a crocodile, but that’s a fairly reasonable reaction for a famed pirate maimed by a lowly boy who, simultaneously, happens to be a colossal little prick.

Anyway, I’m rambling, but the point is that the Lost Boys missed opportunity’s knock, I’m telling you. They have no idea the amoral, immature playground they’re missing.