I want to give a commencement address. I want to stand in front of an auditorium full of beaming youngsters and boomer parents and pontificate on the monumental truths I have gleaned from being rode hard and put away wet. I don’t much care whether the speech is to elementary school, high school or college graduates. My message would be the same: Grow up to be cowboys.
Cowboys say please, thank you and ma’am. They help old ladies cross streets, and remove their hats when they enter the house. They keep their mouths shut and their eyes open. They spend their time fixing things that are broke instead of analyzing political, religious or birth-control preferences, yours or theirs. They live free of mission statements, leadership conferences and personal coaches.
Given the opportunity, I would urge young graduates to keep the myth of the Wild West alive. Lie some, laugh often, and love lots. Write bad poems and good letters to the editor. Sing outside the shower. Eat Rocky Mountain oysters. Watch prairie chickens dance. Summit all 54 fourteeners. Drive a vehicle with a crash bar and tow ball mount. Jeep every dirt road in the county and cut a few new ones. Have the gumption to live out your dreams.
Boys, find a good horse, a good dog and a good woman. Nail the Hartford elk. Fall off a bucking horse and win a fence-line dispute. Make friends who can fix parking tickets and get your kid his first job.
Girls, kiss enough frogs to locate a prince. Use the good china every day. Drink only wine in corked bottles. Stay good-looking, good- hearted and good-humored, and never give up shopping at Victoria’s Secret.
Learn to play the fiddle, in-line skate and make cappuccino. If you never have the opportunity to make love on top of a bar, at least dance on top of one. Seek only green pastures and mountain lakes. Light up meadows with your smile, and laugh loud enough to rattle windows in the next county. If you must go to symphonies, have the decency to stay awake. If you insist upon serving on the hospital board, be good enough to make a hefty contribution to their capital campaign. Don’t ever take a job that requires a hairnet, and quit any job when the canary stops singing.
Think about careers you know nothing about: maybe become an extension agent. Astonish the world with a spectacular invention: a jet-powered ski board, maybe. Explore places whose names you can’t spell: Rarotonga comes to mind. Read books your teachers never assigned or, better yet, write them. Dress up for Halloween and go trick-or-treating for scotch. Use a little imagination. Don’t paint by the numbers.
Be a scoundrel. Spend sunup so that you have stories to tell at sundown. Plan ahead. Make sure that 70 years from now, when you’re hanging out in a rocker sipping Coors through a straw, you have something to remember. Don’t be carted off to the nursing home with nothing on your mind, no memories, no complaints. Be a curmudgeon.
Go somewhere, be somebody, and do something besides lunch. Don’t sleep with your best friend’s wife. Don’t slander the mayor. Don’t shoot squirrels in front of kids, and, for goodness sake, don’t admit to gunning down prairie dogs. In fact, it may be best to dummy up about the times you drained the beaver pond, put sugar in the English teacher’s gas tank, poached a deer and made love in the poison ivy.
Maybe skip the stories about stealing hubcaps, outhouses and Christmas trees. Pretend you never scaled the fence to skinny dip in the city pool at midnight. Forget to mention getting a DUI on your dad’s ‘dozer. The world and the local gendarmerie are not now, and never will be, ready to embrace veterans of the weekly police blotter. But, most important, show a little tolerance when your kids get caught pulling the same capers for which you never got caught.
My pal Tyke the carpenter is fond of pointing out that while some people live good lives, others make life worth living. I say go for quality. Grow flowers, ideas and children. Walk tall, run fast, and range far. Put a $5,000 mountain bike atop your $500 car and exceed the speed limit. Slay dragons and drink red beer.
But all this may be why I’ve never been asked to give a commencement address.
