I’m Art Kumbalek and man oh manischewitz what a world, ain’a? So listen, don’t have much to offer you’s this week in way of an essay, sorry to say. I’m pressed for time and I got to take off in a minute and head up over by the Uptowner tavern/charm school and meet up with the fellas so’s we can discuss our Polish Fest plans.
But about that commencement-speaking gig I’ve been yakking about for a while? Seems I’m a day late and a dollar short. Not one call. But wouldn’t you know, the other day underneath a stack of old Bendover magazines, I found a dog-eared draft of a commencement speech I slapped together a couple, three years ago. So if anybody had any doubt that I could deliver the graduation goods for your speechifying needs, let me run this by you’s. And yeah, maybe next year:
Art’s Commencement Gasbagging for Whenever
Students, parents, surviving relatives, friends, Romans, countrymen, assorted hangers-on, please grab a seat and take a load off for I’ve come to praise these former matriculators, not chew them a new one. Thank you and smoke ’em if you got ’em ’cause what the fock.
I shall attempt to hold this intercourse to an ejaculatory length because I’d like to get the hell out of here and start pounding the cocktails even more than you do, I kid you not.
In my effort to whip something together for you’s to listen to today, I reflected upon what I wished someone had said to me when I was your age. And what I wished is that someone would had told me that a long lost, distant relative had croaked and left me a hundred million bucks, that’s what. Sadly, I never got that message and I’ll bet a buck two-eighty that none of you ever did either, ’cause otherwise why would you be sitting here today listening to me? If you had a hundred million bucks, hey, screw school, ain’a?
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But you didn’t have a hundred million bucks, so instead you had to go to school. Yeah, I’ll tell you about school. Better yet, I’ll let somebody else tell you about school, name of Mencken, newspaperman, editor and critic out of Baltimore, who said a good while back: School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. And if they aren’t exactly like that, then either you’re absent a lot or I’m at some poshtown private school, what the fock.
But there is something I’d like you to chew on as you leave here today, so let me tell you a story: Little Timmy was on his way to visit his grandmother. Seated next to him on the plane was a stranger who turned to Little Timmy and said, “Let’s talk. I’ve heard that flights pass by more quickly if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger.” And little Timmy, who had just opened The Austere Academy from the A Series of Unfortunate Events series, closed the book slowly and said to the stranger, “OK, what would you like to talk about?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the stranger said. “How about nuclear power?” And little Timmy said, “That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first. A horse, a cow and a deer all eat grass—the same stuff, yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty and a horse produces clumps of dried grass. Why do you suppose that is?”
“How about that,” the stranger said, “I have no idea.”
“Well, then,” little Timmy said, “how is it that you feel qualified to discuss nuclear power when you don’t know shit?”
And that’s what I want you to remember. Sure, you might be walking out of here with some kind of sheepskin but you don’t know shit, and if you’re smart you’ll want to remind yourself of that each and every day. The smartest thing one of the smartest guys I ever read about said more than 2,000 years ago, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” And that’s really all you need to know.
Hey, you may think you’re getting out of school today, but guess again. There is no getting out. Ha! Once you get out of the regular school, the first thing you learn is life’s nothing but one big focking school you go to day-in and day-out where you’re going to learn something each and every day whether you like it or not; so like it or lump it.
You betcha, you’re going to learn a lot outside these walls but as long as you know that you don’t know shit, you ought to pass through the big, wide world with honors just fine ’cause I’m Art Kumbalek and I told you so.
