May 19, 2004
Grad

History repeats.  Another spring has come and gone and yours truly was again passed over as a college commencement speaker.  Why the academic community insists on not allowing a person to address graduates unless they are one, strikes those of us in the B.A.-less crowd as picayunish.

     Granted any individual with my undergraduate GPA brings to a collegiate graduation the same credibility as Barry Bonds lecturing on “just say no to juice” or Bill Clinton speaking on behalf of marital fidelity.  But keep in mind nobody ever remembers more than a week the speech or speaker at his or her college graduation. I would promise to continue that tradition and deliver as forgettable a discourse as those going before.

     However, somebody has to encourage the twenty-something’s of our land to live their youth while they’re young.  Our republic has remained intact for over two hundred years but can society handle another generation of forty and fifty year old males, attempting to re-capture the youth they frittered away by wandering through life with a diamond in their ear and a bald head featuring what little hair that’s left pulled back into a sad ass pony-tail?  Please twenty something’s of the world; get that out of your system now.

     Don’t panic new graduates. You can be cool when you’re older; it’s just a different kind of cool.  So be young while you are indeed young. 

     How is that accomplished?  First off don’t be in any huge hurry for a career and marriage? Save that for adulthood.  Concentrate today on creating memories.  See the world, drive a cool car even if you have to rent it and live, if only for a few months, somewhere exotic.

     Hey, lay off the cigarettes, stay in shape and statistics say you have an excellent chance of living past 90.  So what’s the hurry for family and job responsibilities?  Spending most of your life with someone you love is the best.  Raising a family the ultimate.   But if you’re going to inhabit planet Earth for over ninety years and don’t marry till thirty-five simple math says you’ll have over fifty years together.   Putting off living the “wild and crazy” young life until your forty or fifty means you also stand an excellent chance of experiencing alimony and child support.

      Pedalling Slick Rock or climbing a fourteener is a lot more complicated when you have a couple of kids in the backpack.  And it’s not fair to the children.  Do the adventure thing now, save adult life for later.

      Also, if you insist on drinking to excess now’s the time.  Folks will forgive a twenty something totally wasted on cheap wine.  Pull the same trick after thirty and people think of you as “pathetic.” Besides, by age thirty you’ll come to realize just how tasty one or two glasses of a really good wine can be.

     And about jobs.  Most people change careers in their late twenties anyway.  Why not do something now you’ve always dreamed of even though it’s not on the career path?  Maybe it’s a bartending job in the Caribbean or being a lift operator for a season in Aspen.  If you’ve always harbored the dream to try for a career in Hollywood or wanted to work on a whale watching boat in Maui, now’s the time to act on that desire     

     When I left college my first job was with a Sioux Falls TV station.  Then it dawned on me, why starve to death in South Dakota when I could starve to death in San Francisco.  So the VW was loaded and headed west where indeed I just scraped by on a minimum income.  But the memories of living on Nob Hill, albeit in a basement apartment, and taking a cable car to work through the morning fogare as fresh as yesterday.