On October 30, 2017 at 1:15 pm, I received this text from my nephew Nathan:
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| Sorry Stephen Furtick for spelling your name wrong. |
I was standing in my kitchen at home on a lunch break from work, probably eating a frozen Trader Joe's burrito. Jen and I were talking about something or other--kids or school, or work, or moving, or whatever-- when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. I pulled it out, read the text and promptly laughed so hard that burrito mush flew out of my nose.
Ok, this is all true except for the burrito/mush/nose part.
Apparently when put to a vote, Nathan, Payton, Sam, Julia, Adam, and the rest of the Arborbrook Christian Academy Graduating Class of 2018 unanimously decided that it would be a good idea to ask me to be the keynote speaker at the only high school graduation ceremony they would ever have. Was this a good idea?
I formally accepted by texting back a few emoji and smart comments, and then went back to my burrito. Jen almost immediately started making it clear that I was not aloud to think anything, or say anything, or write anything, or do anything that would embarrass her, Arborbrook, the Spears, the Grimes, or anybody else at any time, for any reason, under any circumstance. This was her constant mantra for the next 7 months--I made the mistake early on of reading her a few perfectly harmless jokes that I had written. Even as I walked out the door, dressed in my new clothes, shoes shined, hair artfully mussed, she begged me one last time not to do anything stupid.
I thought about this speech constantly. I would write the perfect paragraph in my head while soaping up in the shower, and then later it would be all wrong when I tried to type it into Evernote. It wouldn't make sense, or the jokes wouldn't land, or I'd offend someone somehow. It was dumb, trite, surface, cheesy, lame, and unfunny for months. I wrote and re-wrote, all the while Jen begging me not to say anything that I would regret.
Finally, a couple of weeks before graduation day, I got it right. It felt right, the points lining up, the content clean, the jokes...well the jokes were still lame. I set up a podium made of buckets and boxes in a storage unit and started practicing. I'd read it out loud over and over again, making notes, changing words, fixing sentences. I really hope that there are no cameras in that building.
So here's the text of the speech. My brother in law Matt filmed it as well, so feel free to click the play button if you'd rather watch the video than read the wall of text below. The quality of writing is no better than the quality of the (vertical) video.
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Thank you Lydia, thank you Mr. Zawacki, thank you Arborbrook students and parents and...oh gosh..
I forgot my mom was going to be here….
can’t say that,
strike that,
haha...nope not that either
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Ok well our time together just got a lot shorter. And a lot more appropriate.
Graduates. The class of 2018. Congratulations to you all. People, let’s have a round of applause for the Arborbrook Christian Academy graduating class of 2018.
Alright. Look, we all know that you all already know pretty much everything. You’re on top of the world! For the past 18 years of your life, You’ve been taught and guided and lectured and mentored. You’ve had early morning advice from your parents over a half full glass of orange juice, and late night lectures from those same parents when you stayed out past curfew without a call, text or explination—you’ve read the blogs, the tweets and the old people Facebook posts that your parents have tagged you in—ok maybe you skimmed those. You’ve had more pep talks than a losing girls basketball team at halftime.
You know how to act, how to behave, what to do when, and how to do it because you’ve had it pounded into you day after day after day.
So if I were you, and it was 25 years ago and I was sitting where you are sitting, I’d be thinking to myself:
why in the world should I sit here and listen to one more old man stand in front of me and give me pithy thin advice based on outdated experiences that happened half a lifetime ago?
And you’d be right I guess. But you voted for me to be your graduation speaker, and I’m here, so for the next 2 hours and 45 minutes or so, you’re stuck. Settle in.
I wrote so many jokes for this speech. I wrote lots of Arborbrook jokes--gluten free jokes, essential oil jokes, jokes about the school facility, the locker hallway, the lunch porch, the sports program, the drama program, the cottage, and the administration. I wrote a joke about Arborbrook board member Matt Depp, where he and his vastly more famous brother Johnny started a rip-off ice-cream business called Deppin Dots. I wrote a hilarious Nathan-Julia joke that Julia politely asked me to never, ever repeat out loud, ever, and an unprintable joke about Sam Kitchen hanging out in the kitchen of an old folks home with a bunch of swearing old folks—all they ever said was What in the Sam Kitchen!?!
But then I realized that these jokes are all about me. And today is not about me..it’s about you, the Arborbrook Graduating Class of 2018.
I’m proud of every one of you—take a minute and look around. ALL of these people are proud of you—Every person here in one way or the other is proud of you and loves you…well at least to some extent.
And wow, look at the 9 of you. I know that If I was part of your graduating class, at some point in the near future, i’m pretty sure I’d say this in the middle of an argument: “I don’t know why you think you’re so smart. I mean, I bet you weren’t 9th in your graduating class... like I was.” or, "who has two thumbs, and graduated in the top 10 of their high school class? This guy!”
Some of you I know pretty well, some of you I don’t know at all. But let me tell you this—you guys for the past 13 years have done some pretty spectacular things. You made it all the way from kindergarten to elementary school, through high school, and you finished with a passable GPA. You played sports, built computers, worked jobs, sang in plays, created secret instagram accounts, grew stuff in gardens, launched potatoes, made lifelong friendships, and developed into decent human beings along the way. And this is your day.
To put this in perspective, here are some numbers:
You spent 943 hours in Elementary School--per year Thats 5658 hours just in grades 1-6. In grades 7-12 you spent 1215 hours per year—that’s another 7290 hours. The total hours of your life spent in school so far is right around 12,984 (if someone out there is adding these numbers up, please remember that I went to public school. In South Carolina…). Heck, if you were homeschooled at some point, it could either be twice that number, or half of it, depending on your parents.
Here’s a kicker for ya...If you spent all of that time here at Arborbrook, your parents coughed up a dollar total somewhere north of $104,038 for tuition…that number does not include lunches, field trip fees, apple computer purchases, sports registrations, dr. visits, clothes, shoes, and essential oils for your teachers, oh, and all the while they were also paying on a mortgage. If you think that’s a huge number, you should also consider all the dioramas, and science fair projects, and Spanish papers, and historic english castle models made out of food? and math corrections, and crafty Christmas presents for the principal they did for you after you had given up and gone to bed. How about right now we have a round of applause for the parents!
Ever since I got the text message from Nathan Spear asking me to be the graduation speaker (we do things formally here at the Brook…), I thought a lot about what to say. I was also slightly intimidated in the task of following in Pastor Stephen Furtik’s footsteps as he was last year’s speaker. To all the graduates, thank you for lowering your standards and asking me to speak today. To all the parents here today who are saying to themselves “Wade Grimes? Why Wade Grimes?” I’m with you and I am sorry, and yes I have put on a few extra pounds and yes my hair is super gray these days, but you’re right, my beard iscoming in nicely.
To prepare for the writing of this commencement address, I looked up some inspirational graduation quotes:
Here’s one from Chris Rock:
“Hey kids, check this out. You can be anything you’re good at. As long as they’re hiring. And even then it helps to know somebody."
But that doesn’t really work, and there’s not a lot there to hang a speech on.
I thought this one might work:
"Remember, just like Darth Vader, Strong people don’t put others down, they lift people up"
But I thought that might be too out of date at this point—and memes don’t really translate well to graduation speeches.
I thought for a while about quoting George W. Bush when he said that if you go to college and if you get a 2.0 GPA, you too can be the President of the United States, but Jen thought that might not be a good idea.
I thought about quoting something really cheesy and trying to passit off as cool—like this:
"In a world where you can be anything, just be nice.”
As much as my Advanced Tech class knows that I feel very strongly about the value of kindness, it still didn’t seem to fit. Plus, your mom’s been telling you to be nice since you were like 2 years old.
So I settled on this: Advice my dad gave me when I was in college.
Now my dad, Dr. Larry Grimes, professor emeritus at Clemson University, didn’t send me a lot of letters when I was in college, he preferred to mail onions. Many times over the 4 years that I was in college, I would open my college post office mailbox to find a yellow slip of paper. Those yellow slips of paper were the best thing ever to find in your college mailbox, because they indicated that you had a package waiting for you behind the mail counter.
You took that yellow slip of paper and walked tall to that mail counter, the envy of all your friends. You handed that yellow slip of paper to one of the blue haired old ladies that had been working at that mail counter since 1937. They would say “well what in the sam kitchen!?! Looks like you got a package!”. They’d turn around, root for a while in a pile of brown paper, and then trade you that yellow slip of paper... for a box.
This was always awesome, until I saw my name and address on the outside of that box in my dad’s handwriting. At that point, the image of the care package full of cookies and peanut butter, and candy, and coffee and encouragement from my high school youth group that I was imagining in my head...evaporated. I knew immediately what it was—a vidalia onion. I have no idea why. What in the world was I supposed to do with a vidalia onion at age 19 at Asbury College? I probably ended up climbing to the top of the administration building and launched it as far as I could onto Reasoner Green. I hear that the Asbury University PhysPlant is still struggling with a strange but stubborn onion problem on Reasoner Green to this day.
But I also have one very vivid memory of the one non-onion letter he wrote me. I was probably a sophomore or junior, and I was in the midst of trying to figure out what to do, what to major in, who to be.
I guess I may have mentioned it to my mom, and my mom may had mentioned it to my dad (I’m sure she blew it totally out of proportion, because I never stress, I never worry, I never get anxious, and I never ever above all lose my cool).
Anyway, I opened that non-onion letter, and In my dad’s perfect handwriting, flowing out of that Mont Bloc fountain pen that he always wrote with, he said something along these lines:
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
I think I probably still have that letter somewhere. I tried to find it so that I could quote directly from it, and it would have been better if i had, because in my head the next line, in his perfect handwriting, flowing from his Mont Bloc pen was “DUDE CHILL” but I don’t think that’s quite right. I remember reading that letter, I remember where I was, I remember what I was doing and feeling, and wearing (Not really that big of a thing...I wore the exact same thing every day to class in college. every. day. not my best years). I was at first just so happy that it wasn’t an onion, but it was what that letter said that ended up meaning a great deal to me.
At some point, over the next 4 years, and even more likely many many times after you’ve graduated, you’re going come up against something that stresses the junk out of you. You will be stressed to the gills, tired, anxious, scared, and worried. Your head will hurt, your face will explode, you will eat that entire 5 pound bag of peanut m&m’s in one sitting. When you come up against that time, think of my dad, of his onions, his handwriting, and his thoughtful use of Matthew 6:25-34. I can promise you that no matter how dark that day is, you’ll be ok. You’ll make it through, and you’ll remember how it felt so you can tackle the next crisis. Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? The answer is no.
The second thing my dad, Dr. Larry Grimes told me was “no one is going to let you starve.” This is probably more along the lines of advice that you’ll need after you graduate college, when you’re working that barely-above-minimum wage job, trying to pay the rent, trying to buy food, trying to keep it all together, but you can’t and you’re starting to split at the seams. Remember all those people who 5 minutes ago were applauding for you—your parents, your grandparents, that one guy from church that you can’t remember his name but he always knows yours? They’re the same people that will help you when you need it. And you will need it.
I thought for a long time after college that I had to do it all on my own. I blocked everyone out, tried to carry it all by myself. You know what happens when you do that? You break, you lose it, stuff falls apart, everything that you’re juggling starts to hit the ground. Keep the people that love you in your life. Take help when its offered, and ask for it when you need it. You don’t have to do it all by yourself, no one is going to let you starve.
The third piece of advice my dad gave me is the hardest one to follow. You’re about to be fully on your own for the first time. No one is going to get you up in the morning, no one is going to make sure that you go to bed. No one is going to tell you that it’s a really bad idea to eat a full sized snickers bar every day, and no one is going to stop you. As an aside—Take it from me, please. Do not eat a full sized snickers bar every day when you go to college. It’s a bad idea. Other bad ideas: beer, majoring in English, climbing the outside of buildings, playing Mario Kart, driving late at night on Kentucky backroads with people who are trying to stand in the back of your pickup truck.
My Dad’s advice was this: Go to class.
To be honest, college is hard, but it’s not that hard. There’s stuff you have to do, assignments to turn in, tests to take, and homework to finish. But if I can graduate college, so can you. It all starts with this—make the decision to go to class. There are lots of excuses you can make: The weather is too nice to go to class, the weather is too nasty to go to class, It’s too far, I’m too tired, I’m late already, no one likes me, everyone likes me, I ate a snickers bar every day, I smell like onions, chapel was too deadly boring for me to have to do anything else today, my friends don’t have class this hour, I have to play some random sport, I like mario kart better than Dr whatever her name is. You can make excuses all day long, and some of them may even be valid, but you will not pass, and you will not graduate, you will not get a good job, and you will end up eating triscuits in your parent’s basement in your undershirt if you do not go to class.
When I was 18, during the christmas break between the first semester and the second semester of my freshman year, I made the mistake of thinking that the Grove Park Inn was constructed better than it is. The Grove Park Inn is a hotel in Asheville that is covered in the rock that the builders excavated from the surrounding mountains. After dinner one evening while my family was celebrating my sister getting engaged to be married (super boring), I climbed 3 stories up the outside of the Grove Park Inn, and believe it or not, a rock that was somehow poorly glued to the side of the building came off in my hand. I ended up falling the 3 stories back to the brick patio below. Also, believe it or not, I broke my leg.
On top of having a broken leg in a cast and being on crutches, the day that class started up that second semester back at school, it was snowing sideways through sleeting rain and terrible wind. The sidewalks were solid, covered in ice. If anyone had an excuse not to go go class, it was me. Did I stay in bed? No! I got out, slipped and fell twice on the way, but made it in time to get the last seat in that 19th century English lit class, conveniently right next to to this girl who I had been eyeballing for the past couple months. Because I followed my Dad’s advice, Not only did I pass that class, I eventually graduated, and I married that girl.
Lastly,
Madelyn
Julia
Lydia
Adam
Nathan
Sam
Payton
Samantha
Lilly Queen
Over the next 4 years, decide not to coast—be the anomaly and throw yourself into it.
Use these college years to go on an adventure. Study abroad. Travel outside of your normal circle—go on a mission trip to Haiti or Paraguay, or India, or somewhere in the world that is the direct opposite of Wesley Chapel NC. Serve someone other than yourself for a period of time longer than a couple weeks. It will change you in ways that you will still be trying to figure out 24 years later. You will never have an easier chance in your life to do something as big.
Decide to say Yes more than you say No—but to all the things you should say yes to, obviously parents. Late night mud sliding on the golf course in the rain? Yes. Early morning hike in the dark to watch the sun rise over the cliffs on the Kentucky river? yes. Full size Snickers bar every day? yes. I mean, no. Go out for the University quidditch team? no. i mean yes!
Surround yourself with people that want the best for you, that no matter how much you think that you need it to fulfill your stadium-sized rock star dreams, they’ll tell you that it is not a good idea to pay for that brand new, canary yellow Fender Telecaster guitar with the credit card that you just received in the mail after applying for it at freshman orientation. Find that guy. Find that guy that will help you be your best self. Quickly drop everyone else. There is nothing wrong with not being friends with toxic people. That’s the nice thing about graduating high school, and moving away. There are a zillion people out there. Find the good ones. Be the good one.
Lastly, It is far more important to say “i’m sorry” than it is to hear it. When someone does tell you “i’m sorry”, accept it and move on. Don’t dwell on stupid things. Remember that it costs nothing to be a decent human. Do everything you can to take the rough edges out of life - treat people how you want to be treated and look at life through a lense of Grace--Because a life lived full of grace is a life well lived. Spread hope like fire, and live these next few years like the crazy ruckus cacophony that they should be...but above all. Go. To. Class.
Congratulations, Arborbrook Graduating Class of 2018!
So that was going to be the end of the speech until I found out just a few weeks ago that we have a graduate that has signed up to join the Marine Corps. Thank you Sam Kitchen, on behalf of everyone here, for your dedication, commitment and willingness to serve. You have my cell number. Call me when you need it.
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Ok, well there you go. If you've read to the end of this, you're a better person than most. If you watched the video, you can tell that I'm not a great speaker or read-out-loud-er. It ment a great deal to be the graduation speaker.
Thanks Nathan, Payton, Sam, Julia, Adam, and everyone else for thinking of me.
