Graduation Speaker

 

I've sometimes imagined myself speaking at a college graduation, or maybe even a high school graduation. Where I actually spoke was at elementary school just down the road apiece where the 5th graders were having a graduation ceremony.

Parents and friends await entrance of 5th grade grads.

I had a pretty good time. Granted, I cut my speech short because it was beastly hot in the un-air-conditioned gym, but it's not like folks remember graduation speeches for very long anyhow. For instance, I have no clue what was said at my high school or college graduations. I remember the WFHS class of 63 was held outdoors, and the RPI class of 67 was held in Richmond's Mosque and both of them seemed to take forever. I didn't attend the Citadel graduation when I got my master's because I'd already moved to Massachusetts and had no intention of returning to beastly hot Charleston, SC.

I was invited to be the speaker because I was a writer. So, naturally, I talked about writing."Writing is power," I told the kids, parents grandparents, and teachers. "So is reading. If you can read and write well, you can do a lot of things." Nobody disagreed with me, so I kept going.  This is more or less what I said:

When you read, you learn stuff. You learn how people act in certain situations, you learn how people assume responsibility for their actions, you learn about ways of life that are vastly different from your own. You learn how to do things. And sometimes you just have fun.


Writing is about making choices. You have the power to choose what you want to happen. You can’t always do this in real life, but if you write fiction—made-up stories—you have the power to make anything you want happen. You can choose who your characters are, what they look like, and what they do. You get to decide what happens to them, how they overcome obstacles or deal with problems. You can even choose what words to use to best tell your story.


In life, you often can’t make whatever you want to happen, happen. But you can choose what kind of person you want to be, and act accordingly. You can’t often control some of the things that might happen to you, but you can choose how to react to certain situations. You can choose what you say to people and how you say it.


You have the power to understand how events happens. Plot is the series of events that happen in a story. Fiction writers know that one thing always leads to another. Good writers always know how their story will end. Then they ask themselves what happened just before the ending, what happened before that, etc.? You can apply this to life by determining what you want and what you have to do to get whatever it is you want.


Writing is also about understanding that there’s more than one way to tell a story. You can see the world from different viewpoints. Writers have to decide what viewpoint to use—first or third person. First is from a character’s view—the character tells the story. Third is from an outside narrator who sees what happens through the eyes of a few—or many—characters. A write has to decide what the best viewpoint is for telling the story. In real life, it helps to be able to see many sides of a situation—many viewpoints.


Writing exercises your imagination. Writers have a sense of What if? What if this happens, or that happens? What if a chicken thinks the sky is falling? What if a monkey is really curious and has all kinds of adventures? What if a boy goes to a school for wizards? What if your family lived in a little house on the prairie? What if you traveled to another time?


In real life, you can ask yourself "What if?” to solve—or prevent—problems. What if you were going on vacation but you were stuck in a traffic tie-up on Interstate? Or on top of roller coaster? What if you heard a weather report that a tornado was headed your way? What if someone asked you to do something you knew was wrong?

I told them I became a writer because I was a reader. My mother read to me when I was a baby, so I loved books from an early age. I read a lot when I was their age. Of course, this was before computers  and video games. We only had 3 channels on TV, and one didn’t come in very well (No cable). Reading was major entertainment,

 I told them about my latest book, Stuck, and how everyone is stuck in something, but being stuck isn’t forever and that they were no longer stuck in elementary school, for instance.

Then I read this passage from Stuck where Jacie, the eleven-year-old main character, is afraid to take her horse over a jump:

The day after Nicole’s accident, Emmie [the riding instructor] decided to teach us how to jump properly. She figured Nicole fell off when Lightning jumped over a log. Maybe if Nicole had known how to jump, she wouldn’t have fallen off.

“There is a right way and a wrong way to jump,” Emmie said, “and you need to know the right way. Just in case.”

What you have to do is sort of rise out of the saddle at just the right time and look between the horse’s ears and look where you’re going and be in balance and a whole bunch of other stuff. It’s complicated. I was kind of scared after Nicole got hurt. You can really get hurt bad in a horse accident. So I lost my nerve, and I’d pull Blaze back just before a jump.

Emmie kept saying, “Go forward and believe in it.” That is how you get the horse over a jump after you get in the right position and all. You have to believe. But I couldn’t.

Even though the jump was only six inches high, it looked big when we trotted over it. There was so much to remember. What if I got hurt? I lost my nerve, and I’d pull Blaze back just before a jump.

“Don’t look down!” Emmie said. “Look where you are going. Go forward and believe in it!”

Alicia had no problem. Mickey is very good at jumping. Even Mary Jo got the hang of it pretty quick. “You can do it!” they kept telling me. I didn’t think I could. The first time I trotted Blaze up to the jump, I pulled back on the reins when Blaze got close. He stopped, and I thought I would go over his head. I was so scared! I was holding on to his mane and that saved me, but I still got bounced around. After that, everybody bugged me to do it right.

Finally I did. Emmie clapped. Alicia and Mary Jo cheered. Then I did it again and again. Finally Emmie had us canter the jump. That was fun.

Then she raised the jump to one foot. It looked HUGE! But I looked where I was going and went forward. It was wonderful! I felt like I was part of Blaze and that we really were flying. I don’t know why I was so afraid at first. Maybe I kept thinking about Nicole’s bleeding head.

On the last day of camp, there is always a horse show for any camper who wants to enter. Emmie and the other instructors put us in groups based on our age and ability. Mrs. Witherspoon [the camp director] called them divisions. Two days before the show, she hung a big chart in the canteen. It showed who was showing in what division, what order they go in, and what classes they’d have. Mary Jo and I were in the second division. Alicia was in the first. Alicia is really a good rider now and her horse Mickey isn’t so green. Girls from all the other cabins were showing against us. Alicia had eight others in her division. Mary Jo and I had twelve.

Before we went to bed, we talked about the show. Alicia was looking forward to it, and Mary Jo was kind of worried because she’d never even seen a horse show before. I admitted I was a little worried, too. I’d never seen a horse show before either, but I didn’t tell them that.

“Don’t worry,” Alicia said to us. “Just do it!”

“Go forward and believe in it!” Mary Jo and I said at exactly the same time.

***

And then I told the kids to go forward and believe in themselves and what they could do if they put their minds to it.

I figured that was the sort of note a graduation speech should end on.

And, on another note, "Graduation Speech," by Charles W. Pratt, was today's poem on The Writer's Almanac.

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