Coming soon to an ear near you:
A preview for audible episode 2,
where I tell the graduates like it is …
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label school. Show all posts
When Commencement Speeches Attack
I’d planned to spend all week finding really subtle
ways to remind everyone of my book signing July 11th, from 3-5 p.m.
at Noble Art Gallery, 100 E. Main Street in Albion. But then I remembered I
still haven’t posted my column—for June—so for today I’ll have to go without
mentioning it.
SLIGHTLY
OFF THE MARK
With June comes graduation,
and I always wanted to do a commencement speech. I don’t know why. I’m not that
good at public speaking, and I’d guess a graduating class is one of the most
impatient audiences a speaker could have.
“Dude, I’ve been
stuck here for twelve years. Let me out, tonight’s the party!”
We can only hope
that guy isn’t a college grad.
I think there’s
some kind of legal requirement for graduation speakers. They have to hit on all
the stuff about everything that’s ahead of you, huge milestones, your life can
be great if you aren’t so drug-addled that you forget to use birth control … I
haven’t heard that last specifically, but it’s implied.
If I did give a
speech, I’d probably feel duty bound to say those same things. But I doubt I’ll
be invited anytime soon: I’m living proof of what happens if you get out of
high school and don’t apply yourself. No college degree, no succeeding in my
chosen professions, no film crews following me around … by 21st
Century standards, I might as well be living in a cardboard box.
Oh, sure, I’ve had
a job since I was 21 and I’ve never been arrested, but how do you turn that
into a reality show?
So I won’t be
invited to do commencement speeches, and that’s fine, because I don’t think you
get paid for those things. Just the same, after years of real life experience, there
might be useful things I can pass on to today’s graduates:
First of all,
listen to people who have years of real life experience. These would be the
same people you spent your teen years not listening to. In some ways they can’t
help, because they’ve turned cautious. They remember the terror of diving into
a strange new world, but not the exhilaration.
In other ways they
can help, because they’ve turned
cautious. They understand the value of a retirement plan, owning instead of
renting, understanding a world you think
doesn’t affect you, and using birth control.
If you think I’m
stressing birth control too much, you definitely
need to listen to the cautious people. Also, Google “how much does it cost to
raise children?”
Here’s another
good piece of advice you won’t listen to: You’re totally don’t get that
expression, “you only live once”.
You scream “YOLO!”
and then drag race down Main Street, take off on a road trip with no gas money,
or chug down so much booze that you don’t remember all the “fun” you had
depositing half-digested nacho chips on your girlfriend’s new hipster boots.
If you can’t
remember having fun, does it count as fun? Well, maybe it does to whoever posts
the highlights on YouTube.
See, if you only
live once, then doing stupid, dangerous things for no reason means you could
die, and not come back. So if you
only live once, you should take a minute to pick and choose your fun. Maybe something
with just as much speed, but no illegality … and maybe more safety restraints.
At this point none
of the graduates would be listening to me anymore, so I’ll pretty much say
whatever I want:
Don’t do anything—ever—that gets you compared to a
Kardashian.
Strive to not star
in a viral video. We live in a world where people laugh at you, not with you. Laughing
along with them does absolutely nothing to make you look less stupid to, say,
potential girlfriends or employers.
On a related note,
don’t downplay the value of potential employers. In real life it’s possible to
party your life away, but only if you die really young.
On another related
note, don’t die young. Yeah, sometimes the world sucks, but it’s the one you’re
in … and it doesn’t suck nearly as much as you think.
If somebody offers
you some great new drug and you notice they look like a cross between a mummy
and the “before” photo in an acne commercial, run away screaming.
Sometimes
screaming can be good for you.
Finally, here’s
one of the most important ideas you’ll ever learn: Learn. Yeah, college is
good, but educating yourself is just as important. Look at it this way: If you
get into an argument with someone and realize they’re ignorant, it means you’re
not. It’s a much better idea to recognize ignorance than to wallow in it.
And that would be
my serious moment, if I got to make a speech. After all, you only live once.
 |
| Speech tip: Pretend you know what you're talking about. |
At Least The Cubs Never Lost To Belgium
SLIGHTLY OFF THE MARK
I was going
to make fun of soccer last week, until I realized I’d never actually watched a
soccer game. It wasn’t fair, poking fun of something I had no knowledge of,
although maybe I’m the only one who feels that way. So I sat down to watch an
entire World Cup game (Mexico vs. Greece). It’s good to experience new things,
educate yourself, exposure yourself to other cultures.
Now I’m ready to make fun of soccer.
(You might
be reading this after the World Cup is over, thanks to the quirks of my
schedule—it’s like Star Trek time
travel, only without the techno-babble.)
Soccer’s
just never been on my radar. Not only do I have little interest in sports, but
I live in America, the black hole of soccer. We even stole its proper name,
football, and gave it to an entirely different sport.
When I was
a kid, the only sports I had anything to do with were forced on me in gym
class, whenever I couldn’t find a decent hiding place. Our gym teacher did a
good job of exposing us to different sports. Sure, there was basketball and
football, but in winter we’d shovel the ice off the school pond and give hockey
a try. We ran track, of course, and played
badminton, which involves a slow moving thingy that we would busily swing at,
and miss. Or maybe it was just me missing.
I even did
well a few times, by accident. Once I almost won a volleyball game for my team
(half the class) by serving the ball and actually getting it across the net
several times. The trick is that the other side botched things and didn’t get
the ball back to us—thus I really had little to do with it.
Another
time I ended up second to last in dodge ball, thanks to my schoolyard
experience in dodging bullies.
I usually
hit what I swung at in baseball, or so it appeared when I opened my eyes to see
the ball sailing into the outfielder’s mitt.
But we
never played soccer. Not once. It just didn’t appear on the American horizon, replaced
by a sport that held a chance of literal explosions: NASCAR.
To
Americans, football isn’t the same unless the ball isn’t ball shaped. When I
see a sticker for NASA (Noble Area Soccer Association) I start dreaming about
missions to Mars.
This year
the World Cup drew the attention of the American media, probably in an attempt
to cover up how much the government is screwing up. I’m sure many Americans watch
it, as it’s every bit as exciting as curling and way faster moving than
baseball. Still, no one I know personally seems to have actually watched the
World Cup, until I did.
What were my
impressions? Well, the heat index during the game was 100 degrees, they hauled
one guy off in a stretcher, and several others were left groaning on the
ground. It was deadly.
Deadly
dull.
In
fairness, I’m not a sports fan, so I’m not the one to compare it with other
sports. Still, I noticed several problems which may—or may not—explain why
international football has not become, here in the USA, national football:
Low scoring. Americans, especially
American men, like to score. In sports, too.
Now, basketball scores too much—you get a hundred points scored
in a game, and it’s not special anymore. It’s why big movies on TV are no
longer an “event”: You can watch big movies at home anytime.
Soccer
scores are so low that any time the ball goes in, the players actually go into
convulsions, the crowds riot, and the governments of countries that were scored
on are overthrown.
Too-large field. The World Cup football
field is slightly larger than the national deficit. It lessens scoring, of
course, because by the time a team gets the ball to the opposing net they have
to lay down and nap before trying to kick it in. It might help if each team, to
get down the field faster, was issued a minibus.
There are
other problems, such as the fact that substitutions are limited, which means
that toward the end of the game you see players crawling forward on all fours,
tapping the ball a few feet forward with their heads. There’s also the fact
that, apparently, teams often play with the intention
of tying, rather than winning. This goes against everything America used to
stand for—just ask George Patton.
Finally,
most serious of all, and the main reason why this team sport will never become
huge in the United States:
No
cheerleaders.
And now we know why baseball is fading, too.
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