Deep, Dark, and Humiliating: A Cold Case confession

If confession is good for the soul, then my soul is about to be as healthy as a stallion in its prime. I feel, to be truly transparent here on the Isle, that I cannot write another post without placing on the alter of our friendship a dark secret I have carried since I was 14 years old. 

At the end of our 8th grade year, we had a graduation--a ceremony similar to a high school commencement. One that honors student achievements and recognizes their passing from Junior High into High School. Our administrator chose 1 boy and 1 girl to speak at this graduation and guess which girl he chose? Yep. 

I was informed during lunch time about a week before the graduation that I was to give a speech, and I was delighted. To this day, I do not recall anyone following up with me about my speech; it seemed assumed that I would simply write it, read it at the ceremony, and all would live happily ever after. The day of the graduation arrived, and a friend of mine asked if I could come to her house for the afternoon where we would "hang out" then primp and prepare for the ceremony together.

I asked my dad. He questioned if my speech was ready.

"Nearly," I lied. I hadn't written a word.

He studied me for a moment. "Well, make sure you're all ready for it," he said.

"Okay, Dad," I answered with the typical parents-are-so-overrated teenager tone.

My friend and I went swimming in her pool, watched a movie, and at one point I figured I should hold true to my half-hearted promise to my dad and jot a few ideas down. I asked my friend for a piece of paper. She gave me a sheet of yellow daisy stationary. I wrote down a bible verse as an opener...then somewhere along the line figured that was enough. Maybe I was distracted by the fact that Dirty Dancing was on TV which I wasn't allowed to watch at home. (I'm not proud to say that I was a little on the sneaky side in my youth.)

We did our hair, applied our make-up, donned our dresses, and left for the graduation.

Well, you can guess how things went from there. The ceremony began. My name was called. I walked confidently to the podium. Placed my yellow daisy stationary before me, and stared out at the audience filled with parents, grandparents, and bored older siblings. My hands started to shake and my heart to pound. I had always been quick on my feet and able to ad lib speeches and presentations. But that night was different. I looked down at the bible verse, read it in a wavering voice, and then succumbed to the greatest gift God has given to women. The ability to cry at a moment's notice. 

I started to cry, the microphone amplifying my sobs, and I mumbled something about how much I love my classmates. Continuing my tearful charade, I dropped my chin, shook my head as though unable to go on, then left the stage. As I resumed my seat, the girl next to me grabbed my hand and squeezed. I looked at her and saw that she was actually, genuinely crying. She nodded at me as though she understood the emotion that seemingly overwhelmed me. I smiled weakly back and slumped down in my seat. A few minutes later the administrator bent down next to me and, in a whisper, asked if I wanted to "try again." I looked as mournful as I could and shook my head no. 

Heck no. 

I crumpled the yellow daisy stationary in my hand, living with a new awareness that at that moment I was a fraud. No one--apart from my dad, I think--ever knew that the sole reason for my tears was because I simply had nothing else to say.  I was a lazy, procrastinating, distracted teenager and the tietze fly of humiliation bit down hard. 

Yes, I've learned from that experience (though I still find I tend to listen too often to Procrastination's alluring whisper in my ear). No, I don't believe I've ever used tears to get out of anything since then (not even the ticket for running a stop sign that I swear was a yield sign.) And, since becoming a teacher, I recognize that somewhere along the line my administrator or a teacher or someone should have given me a little prompting as to what was expected for the speech I was assigned. Even now I work with graduating seniors with commencement addresses, so a little guidance would have gone a long way in my situation. I'm not blame-shifting, I promise. But you don't put a 14-year-old in front of an auditorium full of people (many with video cameras) without actually seeing what she's planning (or not planning) to say. 

So I tell you this story because it is one that I've never, ever brought into the light of day before. It is a secret I've carried the weight of for nearly 20 years. And if you are ever stuck in a graduation where a student is droning on and on to the point that you become convinced that the speech will not end before authorities are forced to carry your corpse from the auditorium on a gurney, remind yourself that it could be worse. She could be crying. And if, perchance, she does begin to cry, rest assured the experience is far more painful for her than it is for you.



top image from: bondprofessional.ca

Had I But Known: If You Don’t Have Something Good to Say...

guest post by: Kyle Kirkley

We are now in the midst of a most terrible time, a time when many hopeful young men and women will look up into the oppressive sun and beg silently for respite from the torment they are witnessing. Babies will weep and mothers ignore them. Grown men will rest their heads in their hands and despair that the hours will never cease. Adolescents of all types will yearn for it all to just be over.  

That’s right: it’s commencement season.  

Yes, this the time of year in which students, teachers, and luminaries of all sorts are busy crafting and delivering hypocritical speeches full of trite advice, recycled wisdom, and unrealistic platitudes.  The horror, the horror of it all!  For every rare original, inspirational commencement speech (see David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water” or David McCullough Jr.’s “You Are Not Special”), there are multitudes upon scads of hackneyed, ill-conceived, dull, insincere addresses made each year at schools across the world.  And it’s not just that they’re boring, which isn’t really so much of a crime in itself (although my students would disagree with me on this point).  Rather, it’s that these speeches offer up gross misrepresentations of scholarship and human nature.  

I should know...I’m one of the culprits.

Yes, many years ago (o.k., not so many years ago, but it seems so distant that I could almost talk of myself then as a separate person) I gave such a speech.  I don’t even really remember what I said, and I can guarantee you that it was not memorable for my listeners either.  Abraham Lincoln famously (and, it turns out, ironically) claimed that “The world will little note nor long remember” what he said in Gettysburg, and this represents the only example of a situation in which I am right, but he was wrong.  Truly, no one (not even I) can remember what I said, but we still memorize Lincoln’s speech, and it’s still popular even without the benefit of a YouTube recording!  I believe that my speech had something to do with how our graduating class came together through difficult times.  Yes, we well-dressed, over-nourished, intramural hacky-sack playing, private school college graduates and our difficult times.  Give me a break.  Had I known then what I know now, I would have given a very different address.

Murchison Gymnasium at Westmont College – the site of my forgettable speech

Now, as a high school English teacher, I am bracing myself to witness yet more wasted words and time as yet another bright young student prepares himself by cobbling together some disjointed observations and quotes (oh, dear Lord, please do not begin with a Webster’s definition!).  Then, even worse, some faculty member will offer us the dregs of her frazzled and worn psyche, congratulating and commissioning these students to go forth and succeed in a world stacked against them.  Am I sounding jaded and cynical?  Perhaps it’s because I live with the guilt of just such wasted words.  

You see, I had a voice and didn’t use it, not really.  I, too, stood at a podium and perpetrated an act of violence on my audience’s time, and if time is life, then I suppose we’re talking about a form of murder, here.  How often do we have such opportunities?  How often do we have an audience of thousands ready to hear what we have to say?  More importantly, when the time comes, do we actually have something to say?  (This is why I usually stick to writing fiction.  I’ve learned that other people are much smarter than I, so if I show them some characters who have some problems and those characters muddle around in those problems authentically enough, and if I love those characters deeply enough, my readers will see the wisdom in the story that I may not.)  And, if we have nothing to say, are we brave enough to say that?

I wish I had been.  I wish I had something profound to say in that occasion, but I didn’t, and to prove that I’ve learned my lesson, I will admit that I don’t have much  now, either.  So, had I known then what I know now, I would have simply said this:

“Family, friends, faculty, and visiting dignitaries, thank you for being here to witness this commencement ceremony.  We are honored that you are here to support us, but I won’t pretend like this is the achievement of a lifetime. Sometimes we worked hard and sometimes we didn’t.  We did well enough, I guess.  We’ll try to do better tomorrow.  

The universe may be complex, but our roles in that universe are not.  We should be kind and we should live with integrity.  Everything else is just posturing.  Except playing hacky-sack.  Hacky-sack is also important.  Let’s go, now, in charitable understanding of one another.

Again, thank you.”

K.C. Kirkley, an aficionado of Roman lounge wear, recently received his MFA degree in fiction from Spalding University (May 2013).  He teaches and lives in the Mendocino, California area.  His short story, "Everything is Negotiable" is forthcoming in Upstreet Magazine.

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My children repeat something three times when they really mean it, so in keeping with that: I am honored, honored, honored to have Kyle writing for us today. A dear Terrace Dweller, he is brilliant and hilarious and kind--a rare combination. And because I cannot resist, below is a picture of Kyle on The Terrace sporting his "Roman lounge wear" that he purchased because the airline lost his luggage. Thank you, Kyle, for venturing out of your fiction comfort zone!

I have no doubt Kyle is saying some brilliant, but no one hears him because we're all admiring his snazzy get-up.