After a five-day trip to the other coast for my kid sister’s graduation, we’ve returned home. We’ve returned home after sitting on a plane on the runway for 45 minutes too long on account of the thunderstorms marching across the Blue Ridge and the Alleghenies, and generally speaking the Susquehanna, Shenandoah, and Cumberland Valleys. We got lucky, though, in that we had three seats to share between us two, and the only passengers under the age of nine were several rows away.

The commencement speaker at the ceremony managed to make himself memorable by being remarkably unqualified to share wisdom with the graduates. The graduates, I believe were probably, generally speaking, much wiser themselves than the 23-year old illiterate boob who held forth for nearly half an hour of my life that I’ll likely not get back. Just as strange women, lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government, possessing average musical talent, living in Nashville, landing (randomly) a spot on a spin-off reality show that existed solely because of the writers’ strike is no reason to consider one’s self wise, worldly, or important. Shit. I was on TV once, too, and I have a blog, but apparently no one even considered me for the honor of telling 300-some teenagers that they’re entering a society where a bachelor’s degree isn’t worth as much as it was in the first Clinton administration, a world that will likely experience a catastrophic conflict caused by the scarcity of fossil fuels in the next several decades unless one of them does something ingenious to stop it, and a country that’s home to millions of people who have an irrational fear of the unknown and choose to believe that one day they’ll simply disappear and leave the rest of us the hell alone.

No. Instead a few thousand of us are forced to listen to nonsensical babble that culminated in these three pearls:

  1. Dreams. You have them. Write them down. Not the ones that happen in your sleep. Your aspirations. Your goals. Your wildest desires. Writ large. On lined notebook paper with a sharpened, wooden #2 pencil. Number them. Underline the important ones.
  2. Google whatever you wrote down in step 1. Because someone else has probably already thought of whatever it is you want to do, you ignorant slut, and they’re doing it well enough that you can find them on Google and read about how well they’re doing it. Good luck trying to do it better. But don’t let your past failures negate your future successes. Strike that, reverse it, thank you. Don’t let your future failures negate your successes so far. Hi, I’m Chris Hansen. Why don’t you have a seat over there.
  3. Do your dreams. Your dreams, do them. Don’t not do your dreams. Try to contact the people who already do your dreams. When they don’t respond because they’re too wealthy and fabulous to be bothered by some privileged kid from suburbia, do your dreams anyway. They need doin’. So git ‘er done, as they say.

Fin.

Some beers and bug bites later, I’d managed to kill many of the brain cells that were retaining the contents of that awful diatribe. Conversated, collaborated, and ate with dozens of family and friends and somewhat strangers. Redneck horseshoes. Washers flung like knuckleballs at coffee cans in boxes filled with sand. Win by two. Sweet slumber. Then I worked from the sunny confines of my parents’ back porch, sending, through several dozen tubes, assembled words written for people who can speak coherently (and read, I assume) but fail masterfully at composition. Job security. Know your audience, and the rest follows. The commencement speaker knew no one. Dunce.

14 innings of baseball on Friday night. The best offense in the game succumbing to a team of Jose Vidros. The occasional David occasionally wins. Slept in, finally. Visit the in-laws. Visit the brother. Meet the girlfriend. Drink. Drink water. Last train to Vienna, were that it were Austria. Drive. Minimal sleep and then coffee and mystery product on a bun with the in-laws. Send the family to the beach, lunch with an old friend. Did you hear that he? I don’t understand why she doesn’t like me, he’s the one who gets me drunk, not the other way around. Oh she’s pregnant again, crazy. Chairs are excessive, can you believe? I need to get out of here. I just want an end date, a light at the end of the tunnel. Alight. I want to alight elsewhere. I need to get out. San Diego. New York. Out. Egypt.

Finally, the plane. Then home, nearly lost a bag on a direct flight. How do they? But they didn’t, oh well, good. Tired now, let’s go to bed. What’s that smell? Why is there four inches of water in the ice tray? Blood, ice cream, sticky warmth in the freezer. All is lost. Fridge, too? Fridge too. Damn. Eggs, milk, butter, yogurt, cream, sausage, leftovers. Pitched. Rot. Stank. For breakfast? Bread seems ok. Jam, too? Food raptured. Bread left behind.

Restless sleep, shopping at Lowe’s with Barack Obama. Car accident? Obama there to give a lift. Naturally. What happens when the front of the car is shaped like a horseshoe? Still driveable? Madness. Carlin, dead? We’re worse for it. Back to the work cave. Plenty plenty plenty plenty plenty to go around. We can’t say no. Have it all done by Friday, won’t you? Accountability for $200, please, Alex.

Home. Foodless. Dinner ’round the pub. Acquired a new glass for the cabinet, not sure we’ll have room. No worries. She leaves them fractionally filled around the place. Never all in the cabinet at once anyway. Anyway, time for sleep. We’re back.