"So, I was at Target today..."
Everyone knows that any story that begins with the words:
"So, I was at Target today..."
is going to be a ridiculously awesome story. Or, at least, your audience will be fooled into thinking that it's a ridiculously awesome story, because they are still not over the ridiculous awesomeness of your opening sentence:
"So, I was at Target today..."
That, my dear friends, is called strategy. More specifically, it's called good strategy. I most ardently urge you to employ it as ubiquitously as possible.
So.
I was at Target today.
My little brother and I were shopping for birthday cards, graduation cards, and water guns. That's right, water guns. Gotta love going shopping with the seven-year-old midget child.
So, I'm browsing through all the numerous graduation cards: college graduation cards, bad humor graduation cards, graduation cards with the Obamas on them, sappy graduation cards, kindergarten graduation cards, and graduation cards of penguins wearing mortarboards (<<mais pour quoi?>> as our French brethren would say...)...Then, my little brother asked me:
"Why don't they have graduations going into highschool?"
Putting away the graduation card with the cute duckling on it, I responded: "Pardon?"
He explained, "They have graduations going into college, but not going into highschool." And I said, "No, no, dear, graduation is at the end. It's at the end of highschool, and then the end of college."
Then, as our conversation turned to other matters, I let the matter rest. But, then I realized that it's not called "commencement" for nothing. When I was younger, the word commencement always confused me, because I knew there was that-thing-that-happened-at-the-end-of-high-school, called commencement, so I always assumed that commencement meant "the ending." But it means beginning.
Commencement is a time of new beginnings, of fresh starts, of new adventures.
Commencement celebrates the adventures you've already had, your accomplishments and achievements, but it also invites you into a new world, full of new lessons, journeys and a new stage in life. And that, my friends, is something to celebrate.
Mark Twain (an author whose writings I thoroughly detest [sorry, Mark, dear]), has an absolutely beautiful quote: "To get the full value of joy, you must have someone to divide it with." I've been waxing nostalgic the entire weekend, as I've collected photos for photo boards, hugged friends, smiled, laughed and reminisced. And I've been thinking often about the girls who write this blog. And I'm so thankful for them. For their friendships. Because all the tears, giggles, hugs, pie nights, and beautiful experiences would mean nothing without the people we share those adventures with.
The world beyond commencement is a brave new world. But I know we can face it as long as we have our awesome-sauce friends by our sides.
