Still Red

I was eight or nine, sitting in front of the TV with whatever action figure was selling that season. Five teenagers in spandex yelling about dinosaurs and pulling giant robots out of nowhere. The transformation sequence hit different—that moment when the music swells and you stop being some random kid and suddenly you’re chosen. You have a color. You have a job.

My friends and I would run through the neighborhood screaming It’s morphin time until every adult on the block wanted us dead. We’d bounce off car hoods, swing from trees, make pterodactyl sounds at maximum volume. The neighbors thought we were insane. We were.

Disney cancelled Power Rangers at some point. Seventeen years it lasted. Not surprised—the show was objectively bad. Terrible writing, effects that looked like they filmed action figures in a shoebox, acting that was completely wooden. If you actually paid attention to what was happening on screen, it made zero sense. But that was never the point.

The thing that stuck was different. It was the idea that regular people could be chosen—not because they’re special or destined or born into it, but just because they happened to be in the right place at the right time and couldn’t pretend they didn’t see what needed doing. That message burrowed deep. Still there.

I remember my first girlfriend from around that time and I think of her as the yellow ranger, not for any logical reason but because of how childhood locks things together. She was yellow, I was red.

The show’s gone now, and I haven’t thought about it in years until I heard it was cancelled. But something from those afternoons stayed. The idea that you’re chosen for something whether you want it or not. That when the world gets bad enough, you don’t get to sit it out. You show up. Go or don’t, the work is still there.