THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 14, 1996 TAG: 9606140050
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Jennifer Dziura
LENGTH: 64 lines
IN MANY TRIBAL cultures, coming of age involves being punctured by bear claws, undergoing ritual incisions or getting circumcised by a half-blind 70-year-old chieftain wielding a dull stone knife.
In America, however, our nerve endings are largely left unbothered. One need only extend his hand toward his silly acetate hat and flip his tassel from right to left.
I am referring, of course, to graduation.
After 13 years of schooling, 52 report cards and several prolonged conversations about the merits of being naked under one's grad gown, the class of 1996 finally unbecame high school students, and most did so wearing clothes.
Graduation ceremonies are like grocery store-brand gummy bears - they're mostly the same stuff, with only subtle variations in flavor. Each ceremony involves single-file lines, gowns bearing the label ``Do not wash or dry clean,'' and a long series of speeches.
It's the speeches that I'm going to talk about today. Perhaps you or someone you know will someday give a graduation address. And, be that person a principal, valedictorian, salutatorian, class president or guest speaker, he or she may be left sitting up late the night before the event pondering what to say and what all those graduates are supposed to do with dumb acetate garments that can't be washed or dry cleaned.
It is for just such situations that I have written this column. Following the paragraph your eyes are currently scanning is yet another top 10 list. Here is ``Top 10 Things to Say in a Graduation Speech'':
1. ``Now, graduates, with just glue, plastic wrap and a few of these pretty colored beads, you can turn that rolled-up diploma into a kaleidoscope!''
2. ``Just because you're graduating doesn't mean you can stop consuming your recommended daily allowance of beta-carotene.''
3. ``Now that you're graduating, if you were in a Stork Chocolate Reisen commercial, you could be the big guy who says, `Stork Chocolate Reisen, Mrs. Lang' instead of the little guy who says it.''
4. Tom Jones, a 16-year-old rising junior at Norfolk Academy, suggested, ``And I talked it over with my parole officer - being here does count as community service.''
5. Also a Tom Jones creation: ``Some of you deserve to graduate like France deserves a seat on the U.N. Security Council.''
6. ``The great Russian author Dostoevsky once wrote, `Even in a toothache there is enjoyment. I had a toothache for a whole month and I know there is,' and that's just something I thought I would share with all you fine young graduates.''
7. ``After spending four long years of high school with you guys, I would truly do anything for any of you. For example, if you wanted to be in the ``Guiness Book of World Records,'' I would do anything I could to help, even if it meant feeding you small sips of lemonade while you crawled more than 26.5 miles, which is the current record.''
8. ``I would like now to sing to you a song that my mother sang to me when I was just a child in the Netherlands.''
9. ``Just getting a high school diploma doesn't guarantee success anymore. After all, James K. Polk had one, and hardly anybody even remembers that he was president.''
10. ``In Kafka's `The Metamorphosis,' a man woke up one morning as a giant cockroach. He was so disgusting that his family started to hate him, and, in the end, he died and everyone was glad. I just wanted to say that everyone out there in the audience looks very nice today and I hope you never wake up as giant cockroaches.'' by CNB