In May and June young men and women across the country graduate from high school. They attend parties and proms and listen to earnest peers and middle-aged windbags give speeches about how their high school years will be remembered as the best years of their life. And I am here to tell those young adults that that is nonsense.
It was 35 years ago, but I vividly remember my graduation from Cardinal Gibbons High School. Looking back to my 17 year old self, I certainly did not hate my high school years but neither was I about to get all weepy that they were finished. In fact, with the possible exception of the time I had to evacuate from a high-rise hotel that was on fire, I have never been so glad to escape anything in my life.
I remember sitting in appalled silence at the War Memorial Auditorium as speaker after speaker told me that the best years of my life were coming to an end. “Good god,” I thought, “I’m 17. That was it? It’s all downhill from here?”
It’s really a shame that they don’t let 50-something former graduates give the valedictory, but if there’s ever an opening I want to volunteer. I would tell those kids that for most of them their high school years will not even remotely be remembered as the best years of their life. I would also say that I feel deeply sorry for anyone who regards high school as the best time of their life, because the next 50 or 60 years are going to be awfully bleak.
I would tell the graduates that the most memorable part of my graduation was after the ceremony when Angela Anderson gave me a hug, which considerably surprised me. Angela Anderson was very popular: high school royalty. Since she was ”Anderson” and I am ”Andrews,” and since all Catholic school teachers seat their students in alphabetical order, this meant that she sat in front of me for four years of high school but never once did she speak to the smart, chubby boy with Coke-bottle eyeglasses who was sitting behind her feeling invisible. Apparently Angela knew who I was the whole time and just chose to ignore me with that casual cruelty that comes so easily to pretty girls in high school.
This would allow me to segue into my belief that our high school personas stick with us for life. Because she is a neighbor, I know for a fact that Angela grew into a middle-aged mean girl who mistreats her ex-husbands, her kids and her domestic help. “Mean Girl” is the term we use for female bullies.
I would tell the graduates that those drunken high school jocks will morph into drunken frat boys and eventually drunken ex-frat boys, their sense of entitlement intact as their waist sizes increase. I would mention that the teenaged stoners who dozed through Mr. Ott’s English class are now middle aged stoners, the only difference being that they now favor prescription Vicodin to ill-gotten Quaaludes.
I would tell the graduates who never thought they were never quite pretty enough or athletic enough or that their daddies were rich enough that whatever comes next is going to be way better than high school, and I would tell them to go home and party hard because their best years are still to come.
Finally, because I hate long speeches, I would conclude by telling the kids that three months after ending my high school career as a perpetual outsider I was in college and loving it. College was great and grad school was even better and even now, after working for almost 30 years, I can say categorically that even though there have been days when I wished I was dead, I have never once wished I was back in high school.