Two of my grandchildren are graduating from high school this
year. They will move the tassels and become the future leaders of our world.
Little bit scary, isn’t it?
I’ve never quite understood just how it is that we expect
them to grow up overnight. Especially when it took more than the movement of a
bunch of long strings to mature us. But it’s a tradition. One second the tassel
is on the “kid side” of the cap; the next it’s moved to the “adult side” and
magic is supposed to happen.
But that’s not the way it works. Yes, there does come a time
when a mama bird kicks the babies out of her nest and they either fly or the
tom cat has them for supper. And I guess it is time for these students who know
everything and their parents are super dumb to hop out there in the real world
of taxes and jobs and responsibilities. They’d sure better learn to fly because
the world is full of hungry tom cats.
I can feel them all rolling their eyes at everyone’s advice.
After all, they are all super intelligent beings even if they haven’t mastered
the art of getting the cap back on the toothpaste and do not have the foggiest
notion about how to put toilet paper on a roller or get their dirty laundry
into the basket instead of thrown beside it. And forget all about how to start
a washing machine or shut a dresser drawer.
So here’s my advice to the whole bunch of you no matter
whether you are graduating with more than a thousand students or less than
twenty. The place in which you will learn the most probably won’t be in a classroom
with a professor lecturing on the effects of the Civil War. It will be in the
school of “hard knocks” but don’t worry, if you don’t pass, they don’t send you
home. You get another chance and another until you get it right. Remember you
come from a long line of survivors (your parents survived raising you so you
have good genes) and sometime along the path of life you will figure out that
your parents aren’t nearly as stupid as you thought they were.
There is a day of reckoning at the end of every semester if
you are in college. It’s called “finals” and “grades”. Even though the results
are neither one are put on the movie theater marquis on Main
Street
The college will not give you knowledge. I don’t know of a
college in the world that offers a degree in the ancient art of loafing. Or one in
flirting. Or partying. And when you finish school and go to look for a job there is no place on a resume that asks how
much experience you’ve had in those areas.
Sometimes you will go back to college after a weekend and
there will be no money tucked away in the folded laundry. That’s the week that
your car insurance and your cell phone bill were both due, so cinch up your
belt and eat in the cafeteria. You will survive for a week without pizza.
There won’t be anyone there to pick up your dirty socks or to wash your favorite shirt in the middle of the week.
Don’t be too embarrassed to ask someone how to operate the washing machine
(usually located on the lobby floor of the dorm). I’ll even let you in on a
secret. There are instructions written on the lid of the washer in most places.
In five or six years you will walk across another stage.
Your parents will cry even more at that time than they did at your high school
graduation. That’s because after putting you through school, you are all they
have left. The savings account is in the red. They’ve got three mortgages on
the house. They’ve been working three jobs each and are riding a bicycle to
work so that you can drive a car.
So every now and then call home and say, “I love you,” and
don’t ask for money. And one last thing. All the advice in the world, be it
from Grandpa, Uncle Herman or Great Aunt Gert, will not get you through some
situations. You will have to figure out a few things on your own. Good luck and
may the turning of the tassel take you on that wonderful journey called life!
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