Mack Hall
Children insist on growing up and going away. Every year the old…um, venerable parents and faculty see their high school seniors off to the new world they must make for themselves. Oh, sure, there are always one or two graduates of whom one can sing “Thank God and Greyhound you’re gone,” but the loss of most of the young’uns is very painful, very real, very acute, and very forever. And while some old guy taught them not to ever split (cough) infinitives, which they immediately forgot, the block form for business letters, which they usually remember, and the possible symbolism of Grendel in Beowulf, there are always lots of other little things parents and teachers hope they have learned along the way.
Here then, Class of 2010 are some disconnected factoids your old English teacher meant to share with you earlier in the year, before the month of May very cleverly sneaked up on all of us:
1. In October you will return for homecoming. You will find pretty much the same teachers, school, and friends you left behind. It will all seem very familiar at first. But you won’t be on the team or in the band; it isn’t about you anymore, and that will be oddly disturbing. The same school that once nagged you for tardiness and absenteeism will now require you to wear a visitor’s badge. By October of next year most of the students in your old high school won’t know who you are -- or were. And they won't care. You'll just be old people.
2. Some day surprisingly soon you will hear shrieks of insolent laughter from your child’s room. You will find your child and her friends laughing at your yearbook pictures. You and your friends will be subject to scornful dismissal by a new, cooler-than-cool generation. You will feel very old.
3. Change the oil in your car more often than the manufacturer recommends.
4. Billy Graham attended a public school; Adolf Hitler attended a Christian school. Don’t obsess on labels.
5. You are not going to win the Texas lottery.
6. T-shirts are underwear.
7. For a whole year folks have been telling you how special you are; on the morning after graduation you’ll be just another unemployed American.
8. Don’t whine that you’re old enough to fight in Afghanistan but “they” won’t let you buy a beer. You’re not in Afghanistan.
9. Have you ever noticed that you never see “Matthew 6:5-6” on a sign or bumper sticker?
10. College is not high school.
11. Work is not high school. There is no such thing as an excused absence in adult life. The boss will not care about your special needs, sensitivities, artistic gifts, or traumatic childhood.
12. God made the world. We have the testimony of Genesis and of the Incarnation that all Creation is good. Never let anyone try to tell you that the world is evil.
13. Listening to radio commentators with whom you already agree is not participating in our democracy. Until he was in his thirties, Rush Limbaugh never even registered to vote in any place he ever lived. You can do better than that.
14. Why should someone else have to raise your child?
15. Tattoos do serve one useful purpose – they will help your relatives identify your body after you die of some weird disease that was on the needle. Yeah, sure, the process is sterile – a tattoo parlor looks like a hospital, right?
16. Your class ranking is little more than a seating chart for graduation, reflecting your performance in a sometimes artificial and often passive situation for the last four years. Your future is up to you.
17. Knowing how to repair things gives you power and autonomy. You will amaze yourself with what you can do with duct-tape, a set of screwdrivers, a set of wrenches, a hammer, and a pair of Vise-grip pliers.
18. Movies are made by committees of thousands of people. Sometimes they get it right. Books are usually written by one person. Sometimes he or she gets it wrong. But there are lots more good books than there are good movies.
19. Put the 'phone down. Grasp the steering wheel firmly with both hands. Stay alive.
20. Save the planet? Reform the establishment? Stop meanies from beating harp seals to death? Hey, get a job first.
21. Time to wear the big-boy pants.
22. Some people are Democrats because they believe the Democratic Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Democrats because they are part of the Socialist / Communist continuum and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Some people are Republicans because they believe the Republican Party is best at protecting the rights of the individual. Other people are Republicans because they have Fascist tendencies and believe that government is a weapon to bludgeon people into obedience. Hiding out in the woods and refusing to participate is not a logical option.
23. You are the “they.” You are the adult. You are the government. You are the Church. You are the public school system. You decide what movies will be watched (if not made). You decide what will be on the television screen in your home. Your life is your own – don’t become one of the sheep.
24. Giving back to your community begins now. Serve humanity -- join the volunteer fire department, teach Sunday school, clean up the city park one hour a week, or assist at the nursing home.
25. Don’t bore people with sad stories about your horrible childhood. No one ever lived a Leave It To Beaver or Cosby existence. And besides, you might have been the problem. Get over it.
26. The shouting, abusive, 1-900-Send-Money TV preacher with the bouffant hairdo strutting about on the low-prole stage set while beating on a Bible and yelling is not going to come to your house in the middle of the night when your child is sick, you don’t have a job, and you don’t know where to turn. Your pastor – Chaucer’s Parsoun -- may not be cool and may not sport a Rolex watch, but he’s here for you. Support your local congregation.
27. If you insist on taking your shirt off in public, shave your armpit hair. Or braid it. Or something.
28. Don’t wear a shirt that says “(bleep) Civilization” to a job interview.
29. When someone asks for a love offering, offer him your love and watch his reaction. He doesn’t want a love offering; he wants money. Sloppy language is used to manipulate people. Call things by their proper names, and hang on to your wallet.
30. Stop eating out of bags and boxes, and learn how to use a knife and fork. From now on the menu should be in words, not in pictures.
31. What is the truth? Is it something you want to believe? Something repeated over and over until you come to believe it in spite of your own experience?
32. A great secret to success in a job or in life is simply to show up.
33. Most people do not look good in baseball caps.
34. You will always be your parents’ child. You may become a doctor, lawyer, banker, or, God help you, president, but your mother will still ask you if you’ve had enough to eat and remind you to take your jacket in case the night turns cold. And parents are a constant surprise -- they always have new knowledge you need to acquire.
35. Strunk & White’s Elements of Style is all the English grammar and usage book you’ll ever need. If more people understood that and had a library card, every English teacher in America would be an ex-English teacher standing in line at the Wal-Mart employment office. Keep it a secret, okay?
36. According to some vaguely named family institute or some such, raising a child to the age of eighteen costs the family $153,000 and a few odd cents. The taxpayers of this state spend about $5,000 per year on each student. Thus, a great many people have pooled their resources and spent about $213,000 on you since you were born. They did not do this in order for you to sit around complaining about how unfair life is. Do something.
37. There was never a powerful secret society variously known as The Preps, The Rich Kids, or The Popular Kids, just as there are no unmarked U.N. helicopters. But if you ask me, those guys who play chess need watching; I hear that the pawns are reporting all your movements to The 666 Beast computer in Belgium via computer chips in your school i.d. card.
38. Thank you notes: write ’em. It shows class. You don’t have to pay big money for pre-printed notes; buy notepaper with pictures (hunting scenes for the guys; flowers for the girls) on the outside and nothing on the inside. You can write; you’re a high school graduate, remember?
39. Babies cry. That’s not a crime. However, in public places, other people do have a right to hear a sermon or attend a movie without prolonged yowling. You may feel awkward about getting up and quietly taking the infant outside; you shouldn’t. When you discreetly carry your crying baby away for a few minutes to attend to its needs, other people are grateful to you for respecting both them and your child, and are pleased that the child has such great parents.
40. Take a long, lingering look at your classmates during graduation. You’ll never see all of them ever again. In ten years many of you will be happy and honorable. Others at only 28 will be sad, tired, bitter old men and women with no hope. Given that you all went to the same cinder-block school with the same blinky fluorescent lights, suffered the same old boring teachers, drove along the same dusty roads, and grew up in the same fading little town, what will have made the difference?
Well, Class of 2010, it’s time to let go. Thanks for everything: for the pictures and paper balls and pizza and pep rallies and recitals and concerts and games, for your thoughts and essays, for your laughter and jokes, for usually paying attention (“Focus, class... focus...focus...focus...class…class…class…class…”), for really thinking about Macbeth and Becket and Beowulf, and those wonderful pilgrims (who, of course, are us) forever journeying to Canterbury, for doing those business letters and resumes’ over and over until YOU were proud of them, for wrestling with iambic pentameter, for all the love you gave everyone around you every day. Take all those good things with you in your adventures through life.
And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell...
--Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, IV.iii.115-117
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