Wear sunscreen...

I went shopping today at Fred Meyer--shopping for a new pair of jeans, actually. I don't know how it is for you gentlemen readers, but any lady will sympathize with the drawn out mental, emotional, and physical anguish involved in shopping for jeans. In fact, I had a short commiserating conversation with a woman at the store who saw me wrestle six pairs of jeans out of my dressing room and hang all but one of them on the 'somebody else put it away cause I'm not buying it' rack. It was the second batch of jeans that I had gone through, too. Trying on clothes is always a draining experience. Altogether too much time is spent looking at oneself in one's underclothes--flat and poochy in all the wrong places. Only in movies do people look nicer with fewer clothes on, and then we really shouldn't be looking, should we.

In any case, the experience reminded me of one of the speeches that was made at my school's recent eighth grade 'graduation' ceremony. It was a list, really, given by a former Conway student now high school senior, of all the things she wished somebody would have told her when she was a freshman. I was thinking today, as I struggled with the zipper of a pair of jeans that would turn out to be too tight or too long or both, that if I had made such a list to pass on my hard-earned wisdom to fresh minds just starting out on a new life adventure, I would have started with "When you find a comfortable pair of jeans that also makes you look good, buy them. Buy two pair, if you can. And then go and buy yourself a lottery ticket, because it is clearly your lucky day."

And then of course, once I started I had to compile the whole list. So here it is, my personal message to graduates* of any level:

1. When you find a good pair of jeans, buy them.

2. The same goes for comfortable shoes. Buy them. Buy two pair of them, because you never know when you'll find another good pair of shoes again.

3. If you have to choose between looking stupid and not having any fun, choose to look stupid. (You're going to end up looking stupid to someone somewhere along the line anyway, so why worry about it?)

4. When someone wants to talk to you, close your book, turn off the t.v., stop playing the video game, stop texting, look that person in the eye, and pay attention.

5. Tell the truth. Always tell the truth. A lie might seem easier, but it will bite you in the butt every time.

6. You can't give what isn't yours. If you can't discipline yourself, you will never truly belong to yourself, so if you want to make any difference whatsoever, take every opportunity to develop personal discipline.

7. Sometimes this means following the stupid rules simply because the person in charge asked you to.

8. There are some mistakes that you can't learn from...because you're dead.

9. Sometimes loving someone means letting them do something for you for which you can't pay them back. Always, loving someone means doing things for them without expecting to be paid back.

10. Don't let the fact that you can't feed all the starving orphans in India keep you from investing time and energy into the emotionally, spiritually, and (possibly) physically starving children down the street.

And finally, my best piece of advice:

11. Ask for help. If you don't understand something, ask for help. If you don't get it the first time, ask again. If you were meant to do everything on your own, you would have been born a grown up--and even the most brilliant and effective grown ups ask for help, so there's really no getting around it. Ask for help. And then of course, you have to listen to the answer.

Congratulations graduating classes of 2010. (Now we all throw our hats in the air.)

*and speaking of graduates: guess who got her diploma in the mail today? Me! That's who! And boy does it look impressive: scarlet casing, Latin words on the cover, my full name in schmancy font. I think it's even bigger than my other ones, too!