If you’re a budding 22 year old writer and you want The Simpsons to produce an episode that you wrote, there’s only one thing you need to do — grow up to be one of Hollywood’s biggest comedy producers. While The Simpsons was only just making a name for itself, the rom-com master wrote an episode titled “Bart’s New Friend” and sent it in — but to no avail. The producers didn’t pick up the script until 25 years later after hearing Apatow speak about it during an interview. Brb kms.

In an interview with TV Guide, Apatow detailed the situation, “I was 22, a huge fan of The Simpsons, and hoping for a TV writing career. At the time I was a fledgling standup comic and people said, “If you want to write for sitcoms, you need to do spec scripts.” Only six episodes of The Simpsons had aired at that point but I tried to copy the style and did a spec script where Homer gets hypnotized and thinks he’s a 10-year-old. He has such a great time being Bart’s friend that he doesn’t want to become an adult again … Then, all these years later, [Simpsons executive producer] Al Jean calls and says, “Hey, we’ll make it now!””

Seems easy enough.

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