Rambling Josh

A few weeks ago, Dawn and I headed north for a visit. As is generally the case, we didn’t have much of anything particular planned for our visit, just hang out with family. A plenty good enough agenda for us.

When you have two nephews as delightfully entertaining as Otto and Perry, “just hanging out” is much more active than passive. Those two crack me up, and I feel quite honored when they ask “Old Man Joshy Washy” to play whatever it is they have dreamed up to do for the next 30 seconds or 3 hours. One never knows exactly what it is you are getting into, but all that I get out of it is always worth it.

They are in that window of time where life is play, an endlessly curious search for fun and adventure. That window eventually closes to varying degrees for each of us, but we should fight the good fight to keep it wedged open at least a crack. If we let it close all the way, we risk it getting painted shut with the many somber, mind numbing, and less than fun layers life can bring.

Just a crack, that’s all that is necessary to allow for a little breeze to carry in the sounds of play, and little voices asking you to join them.

Another little voice that invited Dawn and I into his world for a bit on our visit north, was the equally entertaining Eli, my cousin Kris Petersen’s youngest son. Eli is a pistol, and when we went to Beth and Laverne’s farm to pick apples he kept us entertained. Entertained and on the move, as he turned and waved his hand with a gruff “follow me” to show us the various “sections” around the farm yard where he likes to seek adventure.

It reminded me of when I was kid on my Grandma and Grandpa Chrest’s farm, and the various “forts” we had scattered throughout the tree groves and coulees. And like Eli, by order of Grandpa and Grandma, there were places on the farm we weren’t supposed to play. It was of course for our own good, but kids aren’t much concerned about their own good. So it goes.

They’re concerned about very little but following their curiosities, and are well aware that “orders” from Grandpa and Grandma can be bent and easily straightened with little more than wide eye’s and a bowed head of apology.

Their apple tree had a bumper crop this year, and when aunt Beth offered to lift me up in the bucket of their John Deere tractor so I could pick the apples higher up on the tree, I couldn’t resist a ride (or lift) through memory lane.

Grandpa Ardell loved to give us a lift in his John Deere tractor any chance he got. His “window” remained forever open further than many. Picking apples, picking juneberries, or just because, he’d rev the motor to get your attention, wave his hand and say “hop in, the good ones are higher up”.

With a recycled margarine container hung around your neck with a piece of yarn, compliments of Grandma Rose, “so you can pick with both hands dear” you would be taken for a purposely herky-jerky ride to pick the “good ones”.

The “good ones”. They certainly were.

She decided it was time to make some changes in her life. Where to start? She decides to start this endeavor the same manner in which she starts most everything. It doesn’t occur to her that reliance on an old habit to make new changes may be counterproductive, but logic, reason, and general clarity of thought, are difficult for a drowning person to recognize and engage in.

Looking within oneself for an answer seems foreign for those that have relied on others to tell them what they want to hear for so long. Moving from one meaningless scene to the next on an escalator with a fistful of Pop Tarts. A convenient way to get from one point to another, but not very fulfilling and quite devoid of effort, forethought, substance and reflection.

Without an inkling of conscious thought, she reaches out to grasp what she’s been programed to believe will provide the answers she seeks. She reaches out to that which is always there, seldom more than an arm’s length away, never questioning, only answering. She enters, “How to make positive life changes?” and unfailingly answers are instantly provided. One should always be wary of instant answers to questions that have developed the need to be asked over a long period of time.

The output to the question she input offered up many directions in which she could possibly take her first steps towards the change she seeks. A compass that points in more than one direction isn’t a compass one should rely on for direction on such a journey, but it is the compass that she is accustomed to relying upon.

After a bit of swiping and scrolling, the whirling compass of external input suggests that physical activity is a good place to start when getting one’s life in order. It also suggests all the material goods one must have to conveniently, effectively, and most importantly, “stylishly” engage in one’s chosen brand of physical activity. Material goods that will announce to anyone within eye-shot who you appear to be, and what you are appearing to do to be who you appear to be.

Where would we be without such announcements? Forced to explain ourselves through actual actions, and possibly produce actual results? If actions and results don’t show up, the dog and pony show of appearances will entertain our crowd. People love dogs and ponies…until they step in their crap. So it goes.

Walking seemed to her to be a good place to start her steps towards change. It’s something that can easily be mistaken by “her crowd” as a method of simply moving herself between two points. This is important, as it allows her to quit trying without ever having appeared as if she was trying. An easy out, in the event that the way in gets to be more than she’s willing to give to herself.

The walking path looked pleasant. At one point, the path forked, and for a moment, she stood and looked a bit left and a bit right. A moment of contemplation was not a moment she was accustomed to, so she reflexively looked to her device to direct her left or right. To tell her which way people that like to be told “which way” should point themselves to properly experience what everyone else has deemed a proper experience.

A squirrel had been storing its winter supply of nuts in a hollow limb that overhung the fork in the path below. A hollow limb that was providing the shade she needed to see the screen perched in her hand. The squirrel warned her that he’d misjudged the nut mass the hollow limb could safely maintain, but her senses were occupied.

As she turned left, or possibly right, she most likely glimpsed the reflection of the falling branch on her screen as she snapped a selfie to post for the validation she had grown accustomed to seeking. Validation in the form of comments rife with the usual platitudes, or a simple “thumbs up” from the more banal. She successfully captured and posted the moment. The branch frozen in its free fall. The squirrel with its little paws covering its eyes, unable to bear witness to the tragedy unfolding below.

In the end, the “others” shared the link that reported the tragedy that had befell her…their “friend”…then they scrolled on…

Finger Pistols Frank was the best horseshoe thrower in the county, just ask him. Each year during the Labor Day Weekend Family Fun Days Celebration, the local chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows hosts a horseshoe tournament, and Finger Pistols Frank has been the champion shoe tosser for 19-years straight.

Second Fiddle Silas, as Frank liked to call him as he “pow…powed” him with double finger pistols, had rang in at runner-up for those very same 19-years straight. Silas was a kindly man, gentle, soft-spoken, a friend to all, and each year all gathered around the horseshoe pits in hopes that Silas would holster Frank’s finger pistols.

Frank had a special fedora that he only wore for the championship match each year. Affixed to the fedora were 19 gold horseshoe shaped pins that were each conspicuously emblazoned with the word “CHAMPION” and the year in which it was won.

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows didn’t issue the pins to the champion, Frank had them made special for himself at a local business, The Jewelry, Trophy & Bait Barn. They hated making them for him, but business is business. So it goes.

The fedora glistened and glinted in the afternoon sun with each turn of Franks head while he peacocked around the horseshoe pits. When he let go a good toss, a toss he knew was a ringer, which to the chagrin of all, happened more times than not, he would turn to Silas while the horseshoe was in midflight tip the bill of his fedora, wink, and fire his finger pistols to the clank of yet another solid ringer.

Silas had trained all year for this day. During his many hours of training he’d inadvertently discovered that the grease and salt from potato chips on the fingers of his throwing hand, covered with a thin leather glove gave him tremendously sensitive touch and a level of accuracy he’d never experienced in all his days of throwing shoes.

Silas had been putting up with Frank, and his finger pistols, for long enough, and he was determined to keep the gold horseshoe count on his stupid fedora at 19. This was his year.

The championship match was a back-and-forth battle, ringer after ringer fell upon the stake. Franks finger pistols were blazing, and everyone feared they’d have yet another year of listening to him prattle on at Olive’s Cafe each morning over coffee and rolls. The fact that people tolerated Frank and his early morning finger pistols for 19-years is a testament to those rolls.

Silas needed a ringer to win, he’d never been this close to victory, he could taste it. Actually, he could taste the potato chips he was eating to apply one last coat of magic to his fingers.

While Silas contemplated his final toss, Frank was parading around trying to get the chant of Second Fiddle Silas going, and planning his stop at The Jewelry, Trophy & Bait Barn first thing Tuesday morning to have pin number 20 made.

Amid all the distraction, Silas forgot to put his thin leather glove back on, and as he let go his final toss the grease from the potato chips caused him to lose his grip. The errant horseshoe twirled towards Frank. It made a metallic “clink” as it struck the pins on his fedora, and as he fell facedown, double finger pistols in the dirt, crushing the bill of his hat, the unmistakable “clank” of a ringer rang out. The crowd roared. Silas licked his fingers.

The Independent Order of Odd Fellows commissioned The Jewelry, Trophy & Bait Barn to make a plaque to place at the horseshoe pits to commemorate Frank. “Finger Pistols Frank, tolerated by many, liked by few, loved by his mother (so he claimed).”

How often do you witness something that makes your eyebrows lunge for your hairline as your eyes involuntarily widen and your jaw slackens while whatever your preferred “what the ….” slowly spills out of your mouth soaked in bewilderment?

The engineer, pedaling the bicycle, appeared to be late teens early twenties, the caboose, also known as your garden variety little red wagon, was occupied by a downy haired child that I’m sure hadn’t possessed the ability to sit unassisted long enough to appreciate all the ways the ride he was occupying could get sideways…or upside down.

I was driving north on a busy traffic riddled street, they were bouncing and lurching south on the sidewalk. Although our passing was relatively quick, it was quite apparent that the engineer had cobbled together some sort of duct tape hitch connecting his bicycle seat post to the handle of the little red wagon.

I’ve ridden in little red wagons. Their steering responsiveness, loaded with two knuckleheads rolling down a hill bobsled style, is quite twitchy and highly unpredictable. The handle gives you the illusion of steering, your little brothers high-pitched scream from the “backseat” paints a more realistic picture.

I don’t recall the name of the elderly lady that lived in the stucco house at the bottom of the hill next to our house in Palermo in 1978? I believe the stucco was painted yellow? I believe she wasn’t very pleased that pieces of her house broke loose and landed in our wagon on impact…all three times. I believe they held a parade in Palermo when we moved to Lignite? We weren’t invited.

When I saw the guy on the bike (with no helmet) pulling a toddler (with no helmet) in a wagon (with questionable stability) my first thought was, “does his wife know of the contraption her husband has devised?” My second thought made more sense to me, “the mastermind engineer is the older brother of the unwittingly unsafe little one.”

The hands of an older brothers are notoriously questionable choices in which to place the health and wellbeing of a younger sibling within. Those hands may be attached to an able body, but the whole lot is at the mercy of a brain that holds anyone that can light a fart on fire in the highest possible regard.

I am an older brother, and it is no small feat to convert a fart to a flame. As the old song goes…poetry in motion. Not enough to read by, but poetry just the same.

My brother Gabe is twelve years younger than me, and I was given the responsibility of watching him quite often while growing up. “Watching” him. Maybe adults should be more specific?

I “watched” me put him in the baby carrier on mom’s bike when he was about two-years old to take him for a spin around town. He loved riding back there, and I loved giving him rides.

It wasn’t my fault…My friends were jumping their bikes on our favorite ramp up a steep approach. As was always the case, some were jumping, and some were marking the landings so those that were jumping could see what mark they had to beat. The mark “we” had to beat.

Clicking through the gears on moms Schwinn, my approach speed was magnificent, the launch angle was near perfect, but I failed to take into consideration the impact my cargo would have on our flight trajectory.

If you measure the success of a flight by a landing that includes both wheels and swiftly riding away to the applause of your friends, then our landing, some would say it closely resembled a crash, was not a success.

But, like Orville and Wilbur Wright, we flew. If only for a moment, the eldest and youngest Ellis boys took flight together, while, in unison, the eyebrows of a handful of neighborhood kids made a hasty lunge towards their hairlines. It was glorious…then it wasn’t. So it goes.

I’m fairly certain Gabe got his first concussion that day. Happy birthday brother.

I am always a bit hesitant to tell people what they should see, where they should go, or what they should do when I hear they are going somewhere that I have been. Mainly because I am aware that my sightseeing interests, much like many of my interests, just aren’t that interesting to a lot of people. So it goes.

I also resist the urge to direct another’s travels because it feels as though you’re giving them an assignment, and a completed assignment is never as gratifying as an accidental discovery or a quest fueled by self-interest, curiosity, and good old-fashioned serendipity.

It was self-interest and curiosity that first led me to McSorley’s Old Ale House in the East Village of Manhattan about ten years ago on a visit to the Big Apple. Opening for business in 1854, it lays claim to bragging rights as the oldest pub in New York City. As the writing on one of the window pains looking into this kaleidoscope of bygone times says, “We were here before you were born.” My math skills are embarrassingly minimal, but I’d say that’s a pretty sound statement.

On that maiden voyage to McSorley’s a decade ago, my brother-in-law, the only one in the group in possession of a smart phone, assumed navigation responsibilities. As I said, my interests are not always that interesting to others, so it took a fair bit of negotiating to convince my brother-in-law of the importance of this pilgrimage.

With the voodoo magic encased in his Black Berry (remember those?) he reluctantly led us to McSorley’s and allowed for the consumption of a round of their famous light or dark ale (the only two choices) before scuttling us through the swinging doors to resume the scheduled tour.

I enjoyed the visit, was grateful to my brother-in-law for indulging me, but wanted to go back someday and just be in that space a little longer. Be where the likes of Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Harry Houdini, Tommy Makem, Frank McCourt, and many…many more historical, musical, and literary notables tipped a pint or two amongst the regulars at the worn wooden tables around the potbelly stove.

I was able to get back to McSorley’s a couple of times during my recent 10-day ramble about the city. Once with Sierra and her boyfriend, and again a few days later with Dawn and Jackson. Often times with places like this I am hesitant to return for fear that the initial lure and luster will begin to pale, but thankfully that fear drifted away and was completely lost among the sawdust strewn upon the foot worn wooden floor.

McSorley’s walls hold a treasure trove historical photos and documents, but more importantly, they contain the laughter, song, and voices of an unimaginable number of people. People seeking the company of others, or simply the company of a pint while they read, think, and contemplate whatever is in need of contemplation.

So yes, McSorley’s is on my “must see” list for New York City, or to be more accurate, my “must experience” list. We saw a lot on our trip to the city, but we experienced McSorley’s, and as we pushed through the swinging doors, and the sawdust turned to sidewalk, I was grateful for the experience and for the people I got to experience it with.

The bookend of summer is upon us. Happy August. The Olympics are in full swing in Tokyo, and over the past few days track and field events have begun to take center stage. As always, it is enjoyable to watch the plethora of other events that athletes have dedicated their lives to perfecting, but for me, track and field is the favorite.

For the most part, I find Facebook to be a useful tool to keep up on all the goings on in the lives of family and friends near and far, and as I watch the fleet of foot fly around the track in Tokyo, I am reminded of a post made by a friend back in May.

My friend, and my former high school track coach, Ray Sayler, announced his retirement from coaching Burke Central track and cross-country, and I would like to thank him for all he has done over the many…many…many years for many…many…many young athletes.

Each of the athletes we see competing at any level did not get to where they are on their own. Behind each of them is a bleacher full of supporting characters that have played a part in their story. Parents, friends, family, teammates, and coaches.

Ray was my coach. He taught me the value of setting lofty goals and not wavering from the pursuit of those goals. He taught me that the attainment of the goals I set was secondary in importance to the effort I put into the pursuit of it. Attainment is nice, but the effort, the dedication, the process…that’s where one learns a bit about themselves.

As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “To live life only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.”

Thank you Ray for dedicating so much of your time to those of us on the side of our mountain, often not knowing where the top was our could be. Thank you for seeing what we could not see in ourselves and nudging us towards being better. Better athletes, but more importantly, better people.

One of Ray’s coaching techniques that I carry with me to this day is his willingness to listen to young people explain what they want to do, and while knowing full well that they are going to fail miserably attempting what they want to do, but allowing them to proceed.

On more than one occasion, I was that young person explaining to Ray my ill-conceived plan. One master plan that is as fresh in my mind today as it was in 1991 is, “I hate the 400 meter dash, I think I should run the 800.” Without pause, Ray said, “Okay, you can run the 800 at the next track meet in Stanley.”

Ray said, “All you have to do is run a 56 second first lap, and a 66 second second lap and you’ll qualify for the State Track Meet.” I thought, “That sounds much more leisurely and enjoyable than the 400.” As Ray fully knew, I thought wrong. So it goes.

As I made my first lap the timekeeper yelled out “56”, right on track. About 100 meters later, someone invisible, but very large, jumped on my back. Ray, as he always did, sprinted across the infield with clipboard in hand, trotted backwards at a speed I was having a hard time matching running forward, and yelled, “Run!” I weakly responded, “I am.”

The second lap was not a 66. I crossed the finish line, wobbled to our team camp and slipped into a coma. When I regained consciousness, I looked up to see Ray standing over me…smirking…“You want to run the 800 again?” Lesson learned.

Thank you Ray…for your time, effort, and dedication.

I’ve known for quite some time that it is time to stop doing something that I’ve been doing for as long as I can remember, but I’ve kept doing it. No, it’s not chewing my toenails, those reside the greatest anatomical distance from our mouths for a reason. It’s baseball.

As James Earl Jones said in the movie Field of Dreams, “The one constant through all the years has been baseball. Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, it’s a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

I was 17-years old when my Mom and I went to that movie at the Crosby show hall. It left us both teary eyed, but being 17 I wasn’t comfortable with being teary eyed in public yet so I was quick to blink back any remnants of emotion before the lights of the theater were able to expose me.

Things change. I’m in the twilight of my 40s, quite comfortable with getting teary eyed in public, and although playing baseball still reminds me of all that once was good, for me, it won’t be again. So it goes.

I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to be teammates with my son the past few years, and thankful I am still in good enough shape to sort of look like a baseball player out on the field. But with Jackson shipping off for Air Force basic training the end of August, I’m fairly certain he won’t be around here to play ball next summer.

He’s ready to see a bit of the world, so we will set ourselves to the parental task of soaking up what remains of his time here in Rapid City.

As he has been my sole reason for digging out my old glove and suiting up the past few years, I am certain this is the end of the line for this game…time to put it in the past. I was better in the past anyway. Weren’t we all?

In the distant past, I occupied one of the top few spots in the batting order, where I was expected to contribute consistently to the team. In the present, I languish near the bottom of the order where little is expected, contributions are inconsistent, and more often than not, nonexistent. On the field, who you were offers very little solace to who you are.

The epitaph on the tombstone hovering over all that once was, and my parting words to those strapping 20-year olds that have been kind enough to allow a spot for the “old man” in the lineup the past few years, “As you are, I once was. As I am, you will one day be.”

In sports, as in life, enjoy each season you get to the fullest of your ability, so that when you cross that line for the final time you can look back with the satisfaction of knowing that you gave it a good go and you left it all on the field.

We humans form emotional attachments to many things, automobiles, animals (both stuffed and sentient), lucky socks, and sometimes, whether they like it or not, other humans. Like many of you, I had a teddy bear when I was growing up that I apparently was quite attached to. His name was CBS.

Apparently, I had an attachment to one of the three television networks our rabbit ears were able to pull in as well. There is a vast amount of “things” that have came and went into and out of my life over the years, but I still have CBS. He’s in a trunk in our basement, along with a few other things that have managed to hang around from my youth.

Of all the emotional attachments that have formed, deformed, and detached in my life over years I never expected a campsite to make the list.

I spent two weeks holed up off the grid in our camper in a lovely little secluded campsite in the Black Hills. I’d probably still be there, but I still have some responsibilities in need of my personal attention in the civilized world. So it goes.

Before I uprooted the camper from the site it had dutifully occupied for two-weeks, I took a stroll around the site to bid farewell to all that had kept me company. Abraham Lincoln once said that a bore is someone that relieves you of solitude, but does not replace it with company. The campsite was “boreless” with company and solitude a plenty.

As I strolled amongst the trees that had offered me shade during the day and softly sang in the evening breeze I swear I saw their evergreen boughs slump and their crowns dip as if to say, “ahhh you’re leaving?”

The little stream that was a constant companion offered accompaniment to a farewell song…“The Parting Glass”…the song I used to sing to the cabin each time I prepared to depart. Yeah, I sang to the cabin, it sang to me too, before it lost its voice to a wildfire.

Perhaps the cabins parting has opened up emotional attachment space within for other places of solitude? That’s what the chipmunk suggested as it thanked me for the peanuts and pistachios. Wise little fellow.

The campground has about eight campsites, and even though I didn’t visit with the many people that came and went over the two-weeks I was there, I often wondered where it was they came from and where it was they went when they left.

Introverts aren’t uninterested in others, and indifferent to their comings and goings, we’re just quietly curious from a distance, and only get close enough long enough to possibly borrow something of interest from your life to ponder and potentially write about. That’s how we say thanks. Thanks for allowing solitude in a world that is so often so noisy.

So as the days of summer creep steadily towards the days of fall, I find myself hoping to attach myself to all that that place gave me once again for just a little while. Just a little while. Sometimes that’s all it takes.

Hope your summer is progressing slowly and has been sprinkled with a bit of solitude and a bit of company.

On June 8th, 1996 Dawn and I were united in marriage at a destination wedding in Webster, South Dakota. As this was before Google, we had to rely on our own research to guide our decision on which lavish location we were going to drag our friends and loved ones to bestow upon them the honor of witnessing the beginning of our marital union.

We chose this destination for a few reason, Webster is Dawn’s hometown, it is in close proximity to where a large portion of her large family resides, and I wanted my upstate North Dakota family to have a chance to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city and experience some relaxing small town hospitality.

That day seems closer in memory than 25-years seems like it should feel, good days are like that. On that day, Dawn was 24-years old, hitching her wagon to a much younger man. If you are going to hitch your wagon to someone, hitch it to someone younger. They don’t know where they are going, but they will get there fast.

At 23-years old, I thought I knew for certain where I was going. Looking back, I know for certain that I knew very little. I guess what I did know at the time was enough for then, enough to woo my classmate, my math tutor, my friend, into becoming my girlfriend and my wife.

Like any journey, we both brought our share of baggage along for the ride. Things we thought we needed, things that were ours, things that were given to us, things that we had learned from the lives around us. Things that sometimes we found ourselves peering over the top of to try to see one another.

25-years later, many of those things have been left behind, and what remains we are able to reach across rather than peer over. We know each other…for better and for worse…in sickness and in health. The questions that Father Leonard Savelkoul asked us in front of our family and our friends. “Do you…?”

We did, and we continue to do.

We are both pulling the wagon, it moves a little slower nowadays, but the direction is more reliable. 25-years ago I probably would have confidently orated upon the final destination of our journey. Now I know that that is largely unknown, and for that matter, largely unimportant.

The author, Robert Pirsig, once wrote that it is often more enjoyable to travel than to arrive, and that when making good time, the emphasis should be on good, not time.

So, we shall continue to travel, we shall strive for good, and the destination shall be what it shall be in its own time.

June 8th, 1996 was a good day, and we are forever grateful for all the good people that came from far and near to celebrate our day. Some of those people have since completed their journey, their destination is known, but they move on with us each time we ponder and celebrate our beginning. So it goes.

Sometimes it seems as though the blinking cursor on the white page of the Microsoft Word document sitting empty before me on my computer screen is taunting me. Like a pompously impatient finger tapping silently and quietly whispering, “Well, well…here we are again. What do you think you can manage to pull out of that little brain of yours and place upon the void that stretches before me today?”

Sometimes, thankfully not too often, the answer is, “I don’t know?” I don’t know what to write? I don’t know what to say? I don’t know what to think? Over the twenty or so years, I have been teaching it has gradually gotten a bit easier for me to say, “I don’t know” to my students without feeling like a complete sham.

None of us can know everything about all things at all times. We are all knuckleheads in a few areas…some more…some less. Yes, Google has the answers, but it takes one of us human types to appropriately apply that answer in a useful way to the particular situational enlightenment and guidance we seek here in the real world. Whatever that is?

Over the past few weeks, and in the few weeks to come in the month of May, many students have and will pass into what is colloquially referred to as the “real world”. The realness of this world that young people are transitioning into today seems a bit harder to objectively identify than the real world us “elders” found ourselves in many moons ago.

I suppose this shaky and shifting ground of realness makes it even more important to have, or attain, the capacity to humbly and authentically embrace not really knowing some things, or at least not really knowing some things for now. Provisional truth…true for now given the best available evidence.

Vigilant skepticism of where, and from whom, that “best available evidence” is paid for, produced, and presented by is of course prudent and wise while traipsing through the real world. Skeptical because you want to know the truth, not because you want to believe. Someone once said, “The truth doesn’t need you to believe it, the truth simply is.”

Maybe the real world is real in different ways for each of us? Maybe there is a common real world that each and every one of us must stumble into at some time or another? Maybe I’m not sure what I’m talking about? Maybe that blinking cursor finally got to me, finally pushed and prodded my fingers to type things the rest of me knows nothing about?

I don’t know? So it goes.

What does the real world need from each of you graduates? I don’t know? Maybe start with kindness and civility and see how this real world gig plays out? If that doesn’t work, try it until it does. What else do you have to do now that you are not being forced to shuffle from room to room at the ring of bell anymore?

As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, “The place to change the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.”

Congratulations graduates, welcome to the real world. You’ll do fine…or you won’t…it’s mostly up to you.