Fellow graduates, families, friends, relatives, silently judging faculty behind me, and people who just show up to these events, my name is Bart Buurman and it is an absolute honor to speak to all of you today. Though I have been the school’s source of white noise over the intercoms for the past nine months, I can say with utmost confidence that a quarter of you will at least half listen to what I have to say.
Today we are seated here in the heaviest priestwear from the lesser-known medieval section of the Gap in our matching, oddly geometric hats because we are to graduate today. And as a guest speaker, it’s my duty, as About.com puts it, to use the experiences shared as a class and relate them to the positive yet grueling future that we all have waiting for us after graduation.
Because I do not have the same experience as other speakers, especially Mr. Dangel and Ms. Villano (no, that is not an old joke), I knew that I would have to put a lot of time and preparation into this speech to really impress a very talented and intelligent student body.
So this morning as I began to write my speech, I began to tap into some of my fonder memories of high school that you would all find relatable and inspiring.
I considered writing about my struggle of choosing which of Arlington’s 279 pizzerias to go to on my first half day of high school in freshman year, using the decision as a metaphor to represent the many difficult decisions we will face in life. But considering they’ll finish giving out diplomas at 10 o’clock tonight and Arlington doesn’t have the budget to provide snacks to the audience and graduates, food would not be an ideal topic choice for the speech.
I figured the cannibalistic consumption of a graduate would definitely put a damper on today’s festivities. I remembered back to the time when I found out that world-famous comedian Dane Cook was an alumnus of the school we are graduating today, and considered relating my deflation of spirits as I discovered the low quality of his comedy to the deflation of all of your spirits as you discover the low quality of my speech.
I planned for this part of the speech to be the part where I recounted my epiphany of the advice that would change all of your lives. Everyone would start crying in joy, and it would be magnificent.
But no matter how much I thought about what I wanted to tell all of you today, and no matter how hard I tried to plagiarize this section of the speech, it never felt right. It never felt right that I was giving all of you advice, because I’m just as clueless and afraid as you are about the future. Absolutely anything can happen in the future: Larsen Linov might become an English major. The people on the crew team might stop talking about their 2k times and erging.
So today I will not urge you to think about the future, for, in the words of the late George Harrison:
“All there is ever, is the now. We can learn from the past, but we can’t relive it. We can hope for the future, but we never know what it looks like or if it even exists.”
So right now, have fun with your friends. Get arrested. Actually, on second thought, scratch that last point. But if there is any time to enjoy life most, it’s right now, between the major chapters of your life.
As promised, I will leave the stage so we can avoid the hilarious semicircular burn lines on all of our faces. It has been an absolute pleasure to groggily lumber through these halls with all of you, and I look forward to seeing all of your successes and experiences overshadow mine at our next reunion.
Thank you, God bless, and tip your waitress.
