At year's end, Rose finished the college degree she had begun all those years ago. One week after graduation Rose died peacefully in her sleep. Over two thousand college students attended her funeral in tribute to the wonderful woman who taught by example that it's never too late to be all you can possibly be.
Dan Clark
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10
GRADUATION
You hold all of our futures in your hands. So you better make it good.
Jodie Foster
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Life Lessons
Members of the Class of 1997, as I stand before you to deliver your commencement address, I am reminded of a humorous story. Unfortunately, I can't tell it, because it's dirty. It's the one about the two guys who are golfing, and one gets bitten by a snake. Ha ha! That's a good one!
But seriously, you are about to leave this high school or university and enter into a new eraan era that, if current trends continue, will be: the future. Speaking of the future, I am reminded of a quotation by Steve Miller, who wrote: ''Some people call me Maurice, because I speak of the pompatus of love.''
No, sorry, wrong Steve Miller quotation. I meant this one: "Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin', into the future." How true, true, true, young people! But by the same token, you must not forget another very important part of your lives: the past. As students, you have spent the past in school, memorizing facts such as who was the ninth president of the United States, and what percentage of the atmosphere is nitrogen. Many times you have said to yourself: "What good will these facts do me in the real world?"
Young people, you'll find that the things you learned in school will be vitally important to your success, provided
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that you are a contestant on Jeopardy. Otherwise they're useless. In the real world, there are few occasions when your boss rushes up to you and says: "Tell me what percentage of the atmosphere is nitrogen RIGHT NOW or we'll lose the Winkersnood contract? In the real world, it's much more helpful to know things like what the area code for Fort Lauderdale is.
The answer, I am outraged to report, is "954." What kind of area code is that? You are too young to remember this, but there was a time when there were only about five area codes in the entire world, and they all had either a "1" or a "0" in the middle, the way the Good Lord intended area codes to be, as in ''212," an area code that came over on the Mayflower. But today, in this ''anything-goes" era of drugs and crime and inter-league baseball, ANY random three-digit number can be an area code, and the phone companies, which are all run by Candice Bergen, are adding mutant new ones at the rate of hundreds per day. Do you want to know why the phone companies are so eager to get your long-distance business? Because pretty soon EVERY CALL YOU MAKE WILL BE TO A DIFFERENT AREA CODE, INCLUDING CALLS TO OTHER ROOMS IN YOUR OWN HOUSE, that's why.
Who is going to fight this injustice? Not my generation. My generation is currently occupied full time with applying skin moisturizers. No, it is up to you to take on the telephone companies, and also the companies that make the cardboard food packages that have the little dotted-line semi-circles that say "PRESS TO OPEN."
Let me ask you a question: Have you EVER been able to open a package by pressing that little semi-circle? I didn't think so. Those semi-circles are reinforced at the package factory with titanium; they can easily deflect bullets. NASA pastes those semi-circles on the nose of the Space Shuttle to protect it during re-entry.
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Let me ask you another question: Have you ever tried to wrap leftover food in clear plastic wrap? Have you ever tried to tear off a piece of that wrap using the so-called "cutting edge"? If so, did you get a nice, square piece, like the one the cheerful homemaker always gets in the commercial? Don't make me laugh until saliva dribbles onto my commencement robe. What you got was a golf-ball-sized wad that looks like a dead jellyfish. THE "CUTTING EDGE" CUTS NOTHING, YOUNG PEOPLE! Fact: For every leftover food item that American consumers are able to successfully wrap, they waste more than thirty-seven square miles of plasticenough to cover all of Manhattan Island, or the late Orson Welles.
And what is the Scientific Community doing about these problems, young people? THEY'RE CLONING SHEEP. Great! Just what we need! Sheep that look MORE ALIKE than they already do! Thanks a lot, Scientific Community!
Oh, I could go on, members of the Class of 1997, but I see that the man with the tranquilizer-dart gun is here. So let me just close here with some inspirational words from the ninth president of the United States, Steve Miller, who said, and I quote: "Jungle love, it's drivin' me mad, it's makin' me crazy."
I blame all this nitrogen.
Dave Barry
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A Homecoming of a Different Sort
Jeff and I had many conversations during the year, but I will always remember the time he told me about his family. His mother, a loving, caring woman, was the one who held the family together. She died shortly before Jeff graduated from high school. His father, a successful physician, cold and stern in Jeff's words, had firm beliefs that a person would never make a valuable contribution to the world unless they attended and graduated from college by the age of twenty-three. His father had even paved the way for Jeff to attend the same college from which he graduated, and had offered to pay Jeff's entire tuition and living expenses. As an active Alumni Association member, he was excited that his son would someday follow in his footsteps.
Jeff was twenty-seven and a successful business planner at a Fortune 500 companywithout a degree. His passion was skiing. When he graduated from high school he decided to decline his father's offer and instead move to Colorado to work with a ski patrol. With pain in his eyes Jeff told me that he still remembered the day he told his father he was going to forego college and take a job at a ski resort. He remembered every word of the short
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conversation. He told his father of his passion for skiing and for the mountains and then of his plans. His father looked off into the distance, his face became red, and his eyes squinted and bore into Jeff. Then came the words that still echoed in Jeff's mind: "You lazy kid. No son of mine is going to work on a ski patrol and not attend college. I should have known you'd never amount to anything. Don't come back in this house until you have enough self-respect to use the brains God gave you and go to school!" The two had not spoken since that conversation.
Jeff was not even sure that his father knew he was back in the area near where he grew up and he certainly did not want his father to know he was attending college. He was doing this for himself, he said over and over, not for his father.
Janice, Jeff's sister, had always remained supportive of Jeff's decisions. She stayed in contact with their father, but Jeff had made her promise that she would not share any information about his life with him.
Jeff's graduation ceremony that year was on a hot, sunny day in June. As I walked around talking to people before the ceremony, I noticed a man with a confused expression on his face.
"Excuse me," he said as he politely approached me. "What is happening here today?"
"It's graduation day," I replied, smiling.
"Well that's odd," he said. "My daughter asked me to meet her at this address." His eyes sparkled and he smiled. "Maybe she completed her associate's degree and wanted to surprise me?
I helped him find a seat and as he left me he said, "Thank you for helping me. By the way, my name's Dr. Holstrom."
I froze for a second. Jeff Holstrom. Dr. Holstrom. Could
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this be the same person I had heard about over the last year? The cold, stern man who demanded his son attend college or never enter his home again?
Soon the familiar strains of "Pomp and Circumstance" could be heard. I turned around in my chair to get a glimpse of Dr. Holstrom. He seemed to be looking for his daughter amongst the graduates on stage. Speeches were given, the graduates were congratulated, and the dean began to read the n
ames of the graduates.
Jeff was the last person to cross the stage. I heard his name being announced: "Jeff Holstrom, magna cum laude." He crossed the stage, received his diploma from the college president, and, just as he started down the stairs from the stage, he turned toward the audience looking for his sister.
A lone figure stood up in the back of the audienceDr. Holstrom. I'm not sure how Jeff even saw him in the crowd, but I could tell that their eyes met. Dr. Holstrom opened his arms, as if to embrace the air around him. He bowed his head, almost as if to apologize. For a moment it seemed as if time stood still, and as if they were the only two in the auditorium. Jeff came down the stairs with tears in his eyes.
"My father is here," he whispered to me. I smiled.
"What are you going to do?" I asked him.
"Well," he said. "I think I'm going home."
Vicki Niebrugge
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Two Stories for Life
This is a letter from a college student to her mother and father:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I'm sorry I haven't written in a long time, but something I smoked seemed to have affected my eyesight for a while. The problem is better now. When I was in the emergency room I met a really fine man. He gave me some crystals to meditate on, and, well, to make a long story short, you'll soon have your wish of becoming grandparents. Don't worry. He's mature; he's twenty years older than I am and he has a steady job at the hospital. Who knows, we might even get married. I knew that you would want to be the first to know.
P.S. I really didn't do any drugs, and I wasn't in the hospital, and I'm not pregnant. I don't even have a boyfriend. But I did flunk chemistry. I just wanted you to view this problem in proper perspective.
That is an old story that is brought up to date. It is a metaphor for this occasiona rite of passage, a ritual that you have not experienced before but which human
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beings have been doing for a long, long time.
I suspect that you know just about everything that you can hold for the moment in the way of information and advice, and you have some time to process that now. So I will not, unlike some speakers, give you advice and tell you about the future. What I would like to give you as a gift is two stories. Stories that you might take with you as a peg to hang on the wall of your life, so that long days after this, when you assimilate the experiences that you had at this institution, you might have this peg to hang it on.
The first story comes from a friend of mine who is a kindergarten teacherone of the best. She was asked at a teacher's convention if she would have her class act out some myth, fairy tale or other good story. So being the good teacher that she was, instead of deciding herself, she went to the students, her kindergarten class, and said, "The teachers would like us to act something out. What would you like to do?" And after a lot of discussion, not to anybody's real surprise, they picked something very old. A story that the whole human race knows. They picked that classic old chestnut of "Cinderella."
It is interesting to note in passing that no matter when the survey is taken, that remains the most popular fairy tale for all ages. In the United States of America at least.
It was a good choice on the part of the children because there are lots of roles in "Cinderella." And lots of flexibility. So there was this sorting out that had to be done: who wanted to be Cinderellaall the girls wanted to be the princessand who wanted to be the coachman, and on and on. As the children received a role and sorted this out among themselves, they were labeled as useful in what their role was and sent over to the side of the room. Until there was only one child left: a small kid, tubby, not particularly involved with the other kids in the classin fact, sometimes teasedsort of a different kid. The teacher
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could not say why, but he was not quite like the rest. So she said to himhis name was Norman"Norman, what are you going to be?" "Well," said Norman, "I think I will be the pig." The teacher said, ''Norman, there is no pig in the story of 'Cinderella.' '' And Norman said, "Well, there is now."
So they left it to Norman as to what was the pig's part. I mean, no one quite knew how to fit a pig into the story of "Cinderella." It turns out that Norman knew exactly what his part was. It was one of the great walk-on parts of all time.
His notion was to go with Cinderella wherever she went and do whatever she did. So Norman was always theresort of a porcine Greek chorus to the events. Norman had nothing to say, but Norman's face reflected the action of the drama. When things were serious, he was serious. When things looked worrisome, he looked worried. When things were in doubt, he looked anxious. He began to fill the stage with his presence of response by simply sitting there. And at the end of the performance when the princess was carried off to live happily ever after, Norman stood on his hind legs and barked.
In rehearsal this had been troublesome because the teacher said, "Look, Norman, even if there is a pig in the story, pigs do not bark." And Norman said, "Well, this one does."
You can imagine what happened the night of the performance. There was a standing ovation at the end for the pig. Norman, the barking pig, who was, as it turns out, the Cinderella in the story after all.
Word gets around, and people called up the teacher and said, "We hear you have this dynamite Cinderella thing. What is so special about it?" She said, "Well, there is a pig in itactually a barking pig." And the person on the other end of the telephone would say, "But there is no barking pig in 'Cinderella.' " And the teacher would say with great
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conviction, "Well, there is now."
I went out to visit Sophia Smith's grave this morning, to see her house, and I realized that she was a barking pig. She said that there should be a college for women, and people said there is no such thing as a college for women. Her response was, "Well, there is now."
I have always thought that the "Cinderella" story was poisonespecially the one that is loose in our culturebecause it describes a young woman whose position in life is to waitto wait for the prince, to wait for the fairy godmother. The sweatshirt that Cinderella wore says, "Maybe something will happen." Norman, the barking pig, is the kind of "Cinderella'' story I like, because Norman got up and demanded that there be room for him and his image of himself in this world. And the real fairy godmother was the teacher who recognized the truth that Norman was reaching for and had affirmed his place in the scheme of things. That is a fairy story you can count on.
Hold that thought for a minuteof Norman the barking pigand let me tell you another story to lay alongside it to take with you.
This past spring I was in a town not much bigger than this one, maybe an hour's train ride south and west of Paris. It is a town I am sure some of you have visited, and I hope in the future more of you will go. This is where the great Gothic cathedral of Chartres is built. It is probably the most magnificent statement in stone and stained glass that exists on the face of this earth.
The story about Chartres again is an old story that needs to be brought up to date. The story goes that some time during its building, in the early days, a visitor from Rome stopped by to see this amazing thing that was happening in this small town. He got there at the end of the day, and he went into the unfinished structure, and he began to bump into workmen as they were leaving. One
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of them was brushing some stuff off his front, and the visitor asked him, "What do you do?" And the man said, "Oh, I make glass windows." The visitor went a little further and he bumped into someone else who was brushing sawdust off himself. He asked, "What do you do?'' The man said, "I am a woodworker. I am making some beams over here.'' A little further back, someone else was brushing dust off of himself as he headed home for the evening. Again, the question was, "What do you do? The answer was, "I am cutting some stone."
Finally the visitor got as far back in this great structure as he could go, and there was an older woman with some young people. They were cleaning up and sweepin
g and putting tools away. The visitor asked this woman who was doing this work, "What do you do?" She looked at these young people, and she looked at the structure rising above her, and then she said, "Me? I am building a cathedral for the glory of God."
Chicken Soup for the College Soul Page 26
