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Honolulu Lite
IT'S high school graduation season and once again I am all addressed up with no place to go. That's address, as in commencement address. I've got a really inspiring commencement address ready to deliver to the pink, eager, sponge-like brains of graduating seniors, but speaking offers from schools are staying away in droves. Not even a jingle from my Alma Whatsa Mater, Aiea High School. Graduates: The future
is ahead of youGranted, I wasn't one of Aiea High's shining academic lights. In four years, I flunked something like 11 out of 16 quarters of math. Unfortunately, back then they hadn't invented exotic excuses for failure, such as Attention Deficit Disorder, for which we could have been legally drugged. We were just considered lazy and/or stupid.
But I feel like I've acquitted myself fairly well since high school. In the money department, I'm no Joe Moore -- another Aiea High graduate -- but I've always had a roof over my head, held continuous employment in a not-entirely odious profession and have had only relatively minor run-ins with the law-enforcement community.
And in the nearly 30 years since my high school graduation, I feel that I've accumulated enough life experience to be able to return and share nuggets of wisdom with young people about to take on the world. My commencement address goes something like this:
Congratulations, graduating seniors.
You are about to embark on an exciting part of your life where you will be faced with larger questions than "Why don't portable classrooms ever move?"
A wise man once said, "A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single trip." And, "Before you criticize other people, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, by the time you criticize them, you'll be a mile away. And you'll have their shoes."
I didn't make those sayings up. I got them off the Internet. Everything you need from here on out in life you'll be able to get off the Internet, from summer sausage to college term papers. The answer to all of life's major questions can be found on the Internet: Which long-distance dialing plan really is the best? Is there intelligent life on Earth? What the hell is a "summer sausage?"
Writer Dorothy Parker once said, "If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." That has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about here, unless you happen to be going to Yale. But it's a standing rule that commencement addresses have to include references to famous writers.
Life will hold many challenges for your generation. Like, how you are going to exist without Social Security, I don't know. My generation will have sucked it dry by the time you reach age 40. That's if you reach age 40. Right now, the exciting world of genetic research could be releasing new and exotic viruses into the human population for which there is no immunity. Scientists may actually clone a dinosaur in your lifetime. They might also accidentally clone dinosaur AIDS, so watch out there.
And let's not even talk about global warming and the collapse of the ozone layer. Sure, you may end up in a skin-cancer ward. But at least your kids will have a balmy Spring Break in Northern Alaska.
In closing, let me say, ask not what your country can do to you, but what has it done to you lately? John Kennedy said that. Or maybe it was Bill Gates.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
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