To the Graduating Class of 2013

Oddly enough as parents of a toddler and a preschooler, we had two high school graduation parties to attend this month.  Both graduates were boys, and I struggled with the assignment of making them a card.  I wanted to say something that caught their eye, something different than the rest of the cursive-worded paragraphs that no doubt made up 90% of  their well-wishings.  Michael and I came up with plenty of ideas in poor taste :"Enjoy this time in your life.  You will never be as good-looking or healthy as you are now."  "Say goodbye to the golden days of your life."  "Don't worry about being ready for the 'real world.' It's the same as high school, only not as much fun." "It's all downhill from here."  These ones didn't make the cut.  I put something unique together with no truth negative statements in them and delivered them to the parties, where we ate pizza and nuts and cake until our pants split.  Mmmm, buttercream...

Yesterday afternoon, in a moment of spontaneity, mixed with restlessness and a sunny eighty degrees, the boys and I went to the beach.  Not surprisingly, the sand sported a healthy population of teenagers. I tried to view it as an anthropological study opportunity, but instead I began forming things that I wanted to say to them, should I ever become inappropriate enough to do so. The graduation card, if you will, that would never get placed in the collection boxes at their parties.

I wanted to tell the group of pasty-white boys playing out Star Wars combats ("I am a Sith! You humans are worthless!") that their time would come, and that they may be the next Steve Jobs.  I wanted to tell the overly-tan beauty queens and their sculpted boyfriends who were staring and laughing at the Nerd Group that the tables would turn.  Well, first I wanted to punch them in the face, really hard, but then I would tell them.  I wanted to tell the intertwined horny couple to not get a room, but to save it for a time when it really mattered.  I wanted to tell the teenagers that were smoking in the lake, and the teenagers that were smoking on the sand, that by age forty they would look like they're seventy, all wrinkly and weathered. 

As it turns out, though, I'm not their parents.  I get to be the parents of delightfully naive, innocent little guys whose biggest worry that day included making sure they got chocolate ice cream and not vanilla.  It's hard to imagine that they, too, will grow to be teenagers.  It's hard to imagine what they'll be like.  Who they'll go to the beach with.

              But today, it's with me.