There’s Gotta Be

Now all the stuff comes at us left and right.  Today is Father’s Day and that’s great.  But also, I went to the high school graduation commencement ceremony for one of my grandsons.  It was raining so we were sitting in raincoats on chairs covered in plastic with another sheet of plastic over our legs.  So, it wasn’t exactly relaxed and carefree.  But you come out to support the family and these ceremonies have their logic and things will go according to this logic.  There are the two main speeches by the kids with the best grades and there might be a poem from the poet laureate (imagine, at eighteen!).  And all that’s fine.  It’s all about beginnings and endings and growing up and moving out into a larger world.  And that’s great.  The kids are thinking about all the friends they’ve made and all the growing up they’ve done and being excited for the future.  None of the sentiments are all that original.  But that’s not the point.  For the adults it’s nostalgic and for the kids it’s marking the day and saying goodbye to childhood.  All good.

But then they send up this girl whose speech is associated with some kind of a prize.  Maybe the speech was what won her the prize.  Although if that were true, I have to wonder who is in charge of the curriculum at this high school.

First of all, it was way too long.  The valedictorian’s address took about seven minutes.  This other thing seemed to go on and on.  Of course, maybe it just seemed to go on for hours.  The thesis was that the classroom was the only place where she was happy.  And she hammered away at all the other parts of life where she was unhappy.  Home with her family, between classes at school, at events with “friends,’ working on projects with her classmates and interacting with other people in general.

She described how only in the classroom did she feel accepted and valued by those around her.  Her family, her friends, her classmates in general and just random members of the human race made her feel unappreciated and negatively valued.

After this had gone on for what seemed forever Camera Girl and I looked at each other with the same expression, “What the hell is this!”  So, I looked around and I could notice at least a few of the spectators had a pained confused expression.

Finally, it ended and there was applause but compared to even the poet laureate it was short and half-hearted.  Later on, I was thinking about this speaker.  She was sort of odd looking.  Short, heavy, noticeably unattractive and her expression was a sort of grimace.  And I wondered whether her speech had been vetted by whoever is in charge of the commencement.  I’m guessing not.  Maybe that’s part of academic freedom.  The speakers are free to say whatever they want.  Well, if that’s so then I would at least hope they would make an effort to choose for speakers only those who weren’t undergoing a mental breakdown.

Honestly, I wouldn’t allow someone that morose to speak in front of a crowd of high school students and their friends and family.  It might convince them that the faculty and the administration were nuts too.  I think this girl is symptomatic of the general breakdown of mental health in this generation.  This girl’s maladapted view of life seems to have been selected as a virtue by whoever selected her to speak.  I think we were supposed to empathize with her point of view.  I didn’t empathize with her.  All I felt was sympathy for her friends and family for having to live with someone so messed up that sitting in a classroom was preferable to all other forms of human interaction.  I’m guessing she is part of the LGBTQ “community.”

I guess in a way I should take comfort from the experience.  When school ends this week, I’ll be seeing my grandkids.  And we’re bound to get along better than the antisocial nightmare I listened to.  When I see the graduate, I have to ask him what he thinks of the girl who made this speech.  There’s gotta be a story behind that trainwreck.  There’s gotta be.