Hey, here’s to the nerds. They’re finally graduating and I know glad to be done with the whole high school thing. They aren’t actors or dancers, don’t like combining music with marching, don’t like their look in a Speedo, don’t go out for sports and certainly won’t participate in a car wash. I don’t blame them. I wouldn’t either. But now they, as well as the populars, are preparing to take that next step in life and I’d bet they’re much better prepared. The world just doesn’t care that you were cool in high school. Before they go, however, they must feel the discomfort of one last high school pressure. Graduation day. Now, tossing a cap in the air just doesn’t cut it. It’s a wedding, and the venders' tables are firmly in place. We get sucked into it and the graduation industry is banking on the hope that even the nerds will fold, the way congress might fold on a spending bill, for example. They bank on the fact that kids’ parents will take over the event and do what other people expect. All they'll have to do is mind their heads so they don’t get hit with a wad of hundred dollar bills.
The ceremony itself is just the way people like it, unchanged since the 40s. Graduation photos need to be taken so friends will have pictures of friends they won't care about anymore in about five months, and one photo shot is not enough. There have to be about eight different poses including those with a friend, pet, musical instrument , nose plugs or national honor society pin. These have to be, framed, bound, gilded and packed up for delivery to a spot on the piano that no one plays anymore since you dropped lessons in 7th grade. A big dinner has to happen before graduation so kids can pretend they are adults, not quite understanding yet that adults don’t usually dress like that or drive around in a white limo with a driver named Tony. Then you’re expected to party after the graduation, stay up late and then awaken the next day to call one another and find out how drunk someone else got and how funny it was when they fell out of the car. The robes and caps are returned, shoes thrown in the back of the closet where they’ll remain for about another decade, and you’ll be a bottom feeder again by noon.
Then there are the nerds, who have gone through school with a couple good friends who really accepted them as they were, done their own work, taken their own tests and although they may not have been accepted at Madison, will figure out how to get there another way if they want it. They watched the cool kids at lunchtime, sitting together in a tight knot that will someday unravel as they become the real people they are.
The nerds are the interesting ones; you can’t predict what will come of them because they’ve gone so long unnoticed. They’re the ones to watch. They’re the creative thinkers and entrepreneurs who lead through example. They put their money where their mouths are. They keep their egos in check and noses to the grindstone. I wish I could go back and more willingly appreciate the nerds of my own youth. While I can’t do that, I can give today’s new crop of nerds a big old Dale Carnegie slap on the back and assure them the rest of the country is glad they’re ready to join in the ranks of the working.
So here’s to the nerds who will probably be the ones to get us out of the huge mess we’ve made of the world, and take no sweeping bow when they do.
