Chapter 22: End Of The Year
Saturday, June 9, 1973
School was over. Finals had been this week, and now they were done. Towson State had finished a couple of weeks earlier. I was basically all set. I had the credits I needed to graduate, early acceptance at RPI, and even my formal letter of acceptance into ROTC. I was signed up for a few more humanities and social sciences classes at Towson State this summer, to kill some time and pick up some more easy credits.
The most amazing thing to me was that I was the class valedictorian. This was the student with the highest grades in the class, and it seemed as if the college credits I had aced weighed more than high school credits. The really crazy part was that neither time I went through this I had been asked to join the National Honor Society. This just proved to me that it was totally about favoritism and school politics and nothing about grades. When Parker went through high school, he ended up as salutatorian (number 2 in grades) and was asked to join. When Maggie followed him a few years later, with even better grades, but a don't fuck with me attitude, she wasn't asked to join. How I became valedictorian without being asked amazed me.
But valedictorian I was, and now, instead of sitting with my classmates, I would sit up on the stage and have to make a speech. Graduation itself was being held off campus, since we simply didn't have the facilities to handle it. I had a graduating class of about 660, and if you figured each of those 660 had 4-5 family members coming, you needed seats for almost 4,000. We actually were having graduation over at Essex Community College, over on the far side of the county.
I wasn't sure I was inviting anybody, except maybe Jeana. Once I moved out of the house, I changed my address with the school to my new PO Box. However, this was in the days before massive databases, and school records were a hodgepodge of written records, some kept in the school office, some at the county Board of Education, and still others spread around to places like the counseling office. Before I even had a chance to decide if I wanted guests, my mother called to say she had received the tickets already. I just shrugged silently and got a spare ticket for Jeana. If Hamilton showed up and fucked with me, I'd just kill him on the spot and let Dad handle it.
I really thought hard about my speech. When I was 17 the first time, I was terribly afraid of public speaking. I didn't become comfortable with speaking in front of groups until I was older and going to grad school. Once you are in an MBA program, you end up speaking to lots of classes about business plans and presentations, and I got over my nerves. I wasn't worried at all now about speaking. I just wondered what the acoustics would be like. The school gives you a bunch of suggested topics a few weeks ahead of time, with lots of crap like how we are marching into the future, and bullshit like that.
I didn't like those topics, and when it finally came to me, I wasn't sure the school would allow me to make the speech. I went ahead and wrote it anyway, and submitted it to the Principal. He read it, and then reread it. "You really want to get up on stage and say this?", he asked.
"I do."
He replied, "You aren't going to make any friends with this."
"Maybe that's why I need to say it."
He gave me a hard look and then shrugged. He signed off on it with the words, "It's your funeral." He handed it back to me.
Now it was time to speak. We had all marched in together, in alphabetical order, but I was at the front of the line, and I had marched up to the stage. Several other faculty members were up there in gowns and mortarboards, along with the guest speaker, a local county representative or something of the sort, a politician. We marched in, girls on the left and guys on the right, and sat in the lower seats facing the stage. Parents and guests sat on the sides, up in the bleachers (but a lot more comfortable chairs than regular bleachers) watching. After everybody and their brother got through talking, but right before we got our diplomas, it was my turn. I stood and went to the podium. I was more worried about tripping in the damn robes than in anything else. Mine were too long and dragged on the floor. I reached inside and pulled out my speech and set it on the podium and looked out. I took a deep breath. Showtime! I was about to lose every friend I had gained in the last four-plus years.
When I was asked to speak today, I wondered what I should speak about. I wondered what legacy our class would leave behind, and even more importantly, what legacy our generation would leave behind. As a nation we are rapidly approaching our third century of existence. Are we as a generation prepared to handle it?
Two hundred years ago, a generation of Americans with names such as Washington, Jefferson, and Adams were already talking about their legacy. They would go on to declare independence, fight a war, and write a constitution, and then build an entire new country. Theirs was a legacy of service and sacrifice.
Four score and seven years later, another generation of Americans had a disagreement about the future of that new country. They had another war, but they ended slavery and conquered a continent. Theirs was a legacy of service and sacrifice.
I had to be careful here. Maryland was still south of the Mason-Dixon Line and even though the Civil War ended over a century ago, there were still some people in the neighborhood who called it The War of Northern Aggression. Once a new preacher came to town and put The Battle Hymn of the Republic on the hymn list for Sunday service, and half a dozen people got up and marched out of the church!
Our parent's generation climbed out of the Great Depression, defeated Tojo, Mussolini, and Hitler, and then went on to put a man on the Moon. Theirs was a legacy of service and sacrifice.
Now it is our generation's turn. We even have a name, the Baby Boomers. We were born between 1946 and 1964, and we here are right in the middle of that generation. Our parents survived the Depression, and after fighting in World War II and Korea, decided to come home and relax. Well, we're the result of that relaxation. As a group, we are the largest, the richest, the most privileged, and the most pampered generation of Americans yet born. I look at the legacy we are building, and so far it isn't very impressive.
If the power goes out we complain because we can't watch our favorite TV show, yet my father was born in a farmhouse without electricity or running water. We complain about war and burn our draft cards, but my mother would go on vacation to the beach and see ships burning where German submarines sank them. One day our parents will be known as the greatest generation of Americans, and we will be known as a bunch of whiny bastards! If previous generations left us legacies of service and sacrifice, ours seems to be a legacy of entitlement!
Okay, I stole the 'greatest generation' line from Tom Brokaw, but by the time he writes it in the new future, nobody here will remember. Also, the Principal had wanted me to lose the word bastards, and I told him I would change it. Somehow it got left in.