Continuing my unbroken streak of not being invited to speak to this year’s grad class, I am instead writing this, which is full of wit and wisdom. There might even be some course language and comic male nudity, but I doubt it.
(This is built on the bones of an older editorial; apologies if you remember that one. If you do, you have better recall than I.)
There’s a concept out there, which was popular a few year’s back, called psychological age.
The theory, in a nutshell, is that someone’s psychological age is how old one feels, acts, and behaves, and is thus not necessarily equal to chronological age.
A person can have a psychological age that exceeds their chronological age if they are mature or at least feel older than they really are. Or, someone can have a psychological age that is younger than they are.
A very few might be lucky enough to have a psychological age that is equal to their chronological age.
Somewhere around the age of 37 or so, I seem to have hit my psychological maturity, and have been regressing ever since.
Which means that I have basically aged back into me at the age of 18.
This means that all the baggage I was carrying with me right around the time I graduated, I still carry with me.
So I still have a deep and abiding fear of the opposite gender, I still sit on the sidelines at dances, and the thought of polynomials causes me to break out in a cold sweat.
It also means that every year about this time, I start to get all starry-eyed as I remember my own graduation.
It was late June in Saskatchewan, in the small prairie town that I had grown up in, and it was hot. Stupid hot. I was wearing the first suit I had ever owned in my life. And I was sweating like a pig.
I say first suit, but a few year’s earlier, when I was in grade 8, I had swiped my brother’s white sports jacket, which was two sizes too small for me, and worn that for most of the year, over top of jeans and a lime green dress shirt that was also two sizes too small.
If you’re of an age, you might think that sounds a lot like something that Crocket would wear, and indeed, I thought made me look a little like Don Johnson in Miami Vice. It actually made me look like a poorly assembled key lime pie, if a key lime pie had poor complexion, oversize glasses, and hair that looked like a brown Q-tip. I looked like a dork.
But my grad suit, was the first real suit I had ever owned, a silver gray beauty with a matching tie. I still have the tie, but the suit is long gone.
I didn’t look much handsomer in the suit than in the sports jacket, but at least it fit.
I remember that we had each had to get up and introduce the next person on stage by telling the audience what that person would be doing in the future. I had to introduce the prettiest girl in the class.
Rather than go and ask her what her plans were, I just made crap up. It got a laugh. Even then I wasn’t a half-bad writer.
Afterwards, nearly all the grads had open houses, and people drove from house to house to say congratulations and have some (hopefully) non-alcoholic punch before driving off to say the same thing to the next grad.
My mom had prepared the requisite spread, and I was on display in the living room.
One of the groups who came over was my best friend’s sister and her best friend. I had carried a torch for her since grade 8 (I like to think that my Miami Vice stylings was a way to impress her, but even at the time, I wasn’t so foolish as to think anything I would wear would impress her. Not because of the clothes, but because, well, me.)
The conversation we had that evening (which was basically, “congratulations!” “Thank you!”) was probably the most words I had ever exchanged with her.
(Have I mentioned recently that females scared me back then? Mostly still do.)
While we were talking (and the conversation couldn’t have lasted more than a couple minutes), one of my family (time has obscured in my memory who it was) decided to break out the camera.
I, feeling uncharacteristically confident, turned to face the camera, and placed my elbow on her shoulder.
It doesn’t sound like much, but that was probably the most physical contact I’d ever had with a girl before, and there is was, preserved for all eternity.
(The only other memorable physical contact I’d had with a girl was during gym class. We were playing soccer. I was running after the ball, heading north. Rhonda was running towards the ball, heading south. We met in the middle. She didn’t move for about ten minutes.)
A few years later, she (Charleen, the friend’s sister, not Rhonda, the one I ran into) got married to someone else, and a few years after that, she was killed in a car crash.
Which is to say that life will take some unexpected turns as we move through it, and not all of them for the better.
So, on the eve of graduation, I would like to offer the grads (and all of us), a bit of advice: live life now, because you don’t know what tomorrow will bring you.
Don’t be afraid to take chances because each chance not taken is an opportunity lost. And yes, I am speaking from a lifetime of looking back at lost opportunities. Of looking back and wondering what might have happened if I had overcome my fear, not just of girls, but of failure, of success, of taking risks. Regret is the worst emotion to feel.
So take risks. Even if they scare you Especially if they scare you. Not the risk of driving home drunk after the grad party. That’s just stupid. But risk love. Risk making a fool of yourself. Risk your pride and gamble with your emotions. Chase your dreams and follow your heart and don’t be afraid to ask the prettiest girl (or guy) in the room to dance.
You never know; they might even say yes.
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
