There You Have It! Anecdotal Musings
By Dani Gruber, special to Mountain Valley News
Ah, high school graduation. It brings tears to my eyes—not because of some mature reason—but because I have sat through countless graduations and remember a time when they were held outdoors and kids could take pocket knives to school.
Band kids must attend these events annually and the drummers are always restless natives. My own drummer/graduation experience involved playing chicken with other drummers with our pocket knives—stabbing the knives into the dirt between a straddling opponent as they narrowed the gap between their feet until they realized your aim had not reached any consistency. This occurred while the flutists huffed and puffed over some insanely boring detail which, if one believed the band director, would grind the graduation to a halt unless cured. Such repetitive practice, which rarely involved the drummers, led to the invention of the Band-Aid, aptly named.
Not intending to brag, my own skills at chicken left me a champion among champions because everyone was afraid of me throwing a knife after one unfortunate mishap which left Lynn P.'s tennis shoe impaled in the football field. To his credit, Lynn did not tattle, nor scream. His eyes merely rolled heavenward while he stifled a silent scream which could have passed for an oboe high note. This was even more surprising to the band director because, that year, we did not have an oboe player.
With an unimpressive budget for awards, chicken champions had to satisfy themselves with bragging rights while graduation speakers sought to inspire integrity, high ideals, excellence and honor. In truth, I could lip sync a graduation speech from the sheer number of them I have listened to while single-handedly throwing knives at fellow classmates. Sad to say, this was a highlight of high school for me.
Today, as I listen to the speeches, they have changed little, but most ignore the obvious. In the next 10 years, many of the high school students will defy expectations.
The pimply faced girl will be a model. The fat kid will land in health care. The bashful child will go into sales, the extrovert will be a monk. The tough kid will go into child care, and the tender kid will join the Marines. The singer will marry the pianist, the drummers will marry the knife sharpeners—keeping domestic violence counselors on their toes.
The science bowl winners will promise great things while staring in microscopes for what will seem like eternity to conclude miraculous findings like: if you force feed a mouse a car tire, it will die prematurely and therefore car tires should contain warnings not to eat them. They will receive grants for this research and receive commendations for their contribution to society.
There are one or two C students who will make fortunes and not tell everyone about it because they learned that working hard regardless of the result was key, and they learned in P.E. class when to shut-up about their assets.
From my perspective, the beauty is that soon—within the next 10 years—they will all have fallen in love and many will have ankle biters of their own. One of the single most important decisions they will ever make in their life will defy the odds. Whatever the math teacher made them memorize will not offset the fact that one plus one can equal twins or triplets and that a negative sum is never positive in a checkbook.
Whatever the science teacher promised, a 99 percent guarantee of a negative result can produce a positive result on a pregnancy test. The technology teacher probably did not cover getting peanut butter off a keyboard which is directly related to a positive result on the pregnancy test. Good luck. This is the rich stuff.
The most valuable lessons occur in the cafeteria—where countless children learn the art of negotiation as they try to pawn off green veggie-glop for cinnamon rolls. The victims, of course, are healthier, so I am not apologizing to any of you I swindled out of dessert or chocolate milk in exchange for my magic green beans.
And to those who cheated their way through school, few will land in actual jail, with many landing in politics. Some with much promise will disappoint. Some with no promise will amaze. All drummers with knives should be distrusted, especially if there is highly-pitched oboe-music involved.
Another class is launched. My hat is off to you, the class of 2010.
Hooray, good luck, and try to enjoy the show.
