Column: A bit of pomp, circumstance, & potato salad

Back in 2000, when this year’s departing seniors were in kindergarten, my graduation column focused on the importance of potato salad. As the picture of the tiny tykes on page 2 of the graduation supplement included with this edition of the Reporter shows, those kindergarten kids have changed a whole lot in 12 years. But I’m happy to report that, when it comes to graduation, it’s still all about the potato salad.

That will become evident again this coming Saturday morning as multiple graduation day mini-dramas unfold across Shelter Island while our graduates get ready for the ceremonies behind the school. If you listen carefully, you will hear a repeated thunk, thunk, thunk. That’s the sound potato salad makes when it’s being transferred to the good bowls. And that other noise? It’s the wail of 18-year-old girls proclaiming, “I don’t care, Mother. I am not going to wear this stupid cap. It makes it look like I have a flat head!”

At that same moment, some graduating male will be asking (again) why he has to dress up when no one will see his favorite, “I’m Special, Just Like Everyone Else!” T-shirt under the gown anyhow. Arguing with a potato salad-speckled mother who’s obviously had it up to here, and who waves a wooden spoon in the air while saying, “Look, I don’t need this right now!” is a graduation day tradition.

Some graduates might not yet realize the seriousness of graduation, which ranks fairly high up there in life’s order of things — close to baptisms and weddings and events that require a long period of preparation, followed by frantic pre-event activity that includes the purchase of new clothes and 10-pound sacks of potatoes. Then there is the event itself, which, once safely out of the way, is followed by a massive post-event celebration, attended by scores of friends, relatives and semi-strangers, who will be urged, “Please! Take more potato salad. I made plenty.”

Another tradition is that the graduation takes place during the peak tanning hours of the hottest Saturday of the year. Now we do it outside, under the protection of an expansive tent. There was a time when graduation was in the gym; parents and grandparents of the grads sat on metal chairs and everyone else sat on the metal bleachers. Though fans were brought in and there was air conditioning “of sorts,” it got “catch me I’m about to faint” hot in that room. The only advantage we had then over the more dignified way it is now was that, in addition to applauding the graduates, we would pound on the metal bleachers. That’s probably one of the reasons they had to be replaced recently and maybe why the ceremonies were moved outside.

Once the music starts, no one notices the heat. In they march, this year’s special people. All clean and shiny. No one’s head looks flat and we’re all better off not knowing what’s under those gowns. Most of the teary people who watch the ceremony remember the graduates when they were in that kindergarten picture and, to a lot of them, they still look too young to be crossing over that invisible line, which will finally separate them from those who are not old enough yet.

For a variety of, I’m sure, excellent reasons, no one has ever asked me to speak at graduation. But if anyone ever does, I have my speech ready. (I am also ready should I ever win an Oscar, an Emmy and/or Megabucks.)

In a nutshell, I’d tell them to live their lives by the camper’s rule, which is: “Leave the place better than you found it.” Then, because I believe so strongly in the power of laughter, I would suggest that they laugh, often, and at themselves. Being an adult is such serious business that about the only way to get through it is to laugh. Oh sure, sometimes they’ll mope or seethe or cry but there needs to be room for being silly, for being goofy, for laughing.

I would end by reminding them that the most important things in life aren’t success or wealth or genuine Prada, but to care — about themselves and each other. People who care remember to say please and thank you and I’m sorry. People who care don’t merely point out the problems, they help come up with the fixes. People who care make too much potato salad for life’s special celebrations. And people who care take extra helpings.

Congratulations to the Class of 2012! May your lives be filled with celebrations and potato salad.