My fellow seniors, as we gather here today full of hopes and dreams for the future, I want to wish you the very best on this, our graduation. Actually, it's not graduation just yet, and of course I am not actually reading you my valedictory speech.
As I write this it is 5 AM, and I have just finished another long night of typing away on my thesis.
As "The Zetemouth" scandal settles down, I would urge you all to take a minute to try to remember the true victims in this tragic affair: the handful of poor forgotten Dartmouth columnists like myself who, through no fault of their own, were scheduled in precisely the wrong part of the two-week columnist rotation to get a decently timed article out of the deal. Last Tuesday I was utterly heartbroken that a "Major News Event" was taking place, and I wasn't scheduled to write again for another week and a half!
So there I was, on the front steps of Parkhurst Hall, full of youthful revolutionary spirit. Change was in the air and I was going to make it happen.
Now that we are well underway with what is purportedly Spring term, somehow I imagined things would be a little more spring-like around here.
It seems that once again we are on one of our periodic lock-the-door kicks here at Dartmouth. Just as the noble, indefatigable salmon is driven to swim hundreds of miles to seek out its home stream in order to spawn, so too is ORL irresistibly compelled to try to lock the doors every couple of years, despite tremendous hardship such as us telling them, every time they bring it up, that we do not want the doors locked. Yet once again Marty Redman, Lynn Rosenblum, and the rest of the gang in Residential Life are swimming upstream, jumping over waterfalls, avoiding hungry bears, and such.
Dear God, please send the magical elves to set up my PCR reactions! Let me back up. I have been thinking a lot about children's stories lately (I think this is some sort of senior year regression I am suffering). In particular, I keep remembering one that my mom used to read to my sister and me many a happy childhood night, called "The Elves and the Shoemaker." The story is about a kindly old shoemaker who has fallen on hard times, and eventually he only has enough leather left to make one last pair of shoes.
Monday was a test day for me, and after staying up much of the night and the morning, I decided to take my customary pre-exam nap.
Way back in my adolescent years in scenic Brockport, NY (population 10,013, or 10,014 once Darlene has her baby, assuming the Johnson boy survives that tractor accident), I recall hunting through the video store with one of my friends and finding a movie called "Hey brother, can you spare $10,000,000?" The plot of the movie was that this investor had lost the titular sum of money, and had to panhandle or something to get it back (after gathering this much from the box, I figured I understood the movie well enough to not actually bother renting it). I admit I haven't thought much about that movie in the intervening years, but somehow the picture on the cover depicting a Wall-street type dressed in a suit, holding out a change cup, keeps popping into my head lately.
I must admit that, as I begin my senior winter, I am starting to feel rather old. Back when I was a carefree little freshman (1997-8, when most of you still had zits or braces, or both!), I used to laugh when my senior friends stressed about grad schools or finding jobs.