I’ve always thought it would be fucking cool to be caught in this situation:
You’re walking down the street all by yourself, and are coming toward an intersection. You look one way, you don’t see anyone coming, so you cross the street. Right then, seemingly out of nowhere, a car comes racing at you from the other direction. You can barely turn your head to see what’s happening before it’s almost at you. You have less than a second to react; what do you do?
The ultimate solution for this problem would be to hop onto the hood of the car, jump off the windshield, watch as the car passes underneath, land safely on the sidewalk behind it, and just keep walking like nothing happened.
If someone was to see this happen, they would instantly think that you are the coolest cat in town, and that you have some impressive ninja evasion skills. I wish someday that someone will try and slaughter me vehicularly so I can put my idea to motion.
Last weekend I was in the family van, enduring another two hour drive up to the lake to enjoy the fine weather at the beach. I was sitting in the back, and I had my laptop open on my knees. We stopped for gas at a place along the side of the highway, and as I was zooming the cursor around the desktop in a phase of technological boredom due to the lack of an internet connection, it seemed that the Web gods were watching. Suddenly, the tiny red X that was sitting fixedly on the wireless icon in my system tray disappeared, and a happy blue notification box told me that the internet was connected.
Was I dreaming? Had my Buick Terraza suddenly sprouted a dish and began receiving satellite internet signals? Pushing the thoughts of ‘why’ and ‘how’ out of my mind, I alt-tabbed open Launchy and fired up Firefox to check my feeds before this miracle decided to leave.
Just as soon as it had appeared, it was gone, and I was back to fingering the track-pad absentmindedly, still wondering what had happened.
In hindsight, I realize that it was obviously the gas-station that offered free Wi-Fi to the lonely truckers that were laying in their cabs in the parking lot (don’t overthink it…) . But despite knowing the answer, I couldn’t get an idea out of my head. An idea so excellent and marvellous that it makes me look to the future with a kind of excited apprehension for what could be possible. I haven’t put these ideas to paper or to a patent office, but I’ll see if I can explain them as best I can. I call the idea ‘The Layer’.
I just tried explaining it via text, but realized that it’s too hard to formulate an accurate portrayal with just words. This means I’m going to have to turn to Photoshop and put together an entire presentation. I don’t know how long it’s going to take, but I will put it way up near the top of my To Do list so it doesn’t get forgotten.
Graduation is in two weeks. I think it’s weird how people have such different viewpoints on the same affair. In my class of about 40 people, I’ve seen two major perspectives:
1. “Thank God school is almost over. I want to get out of here and never come back. I’m so sick of school.”
Above is a very common phrase I hear in the hallways. It seems to me that people bottle up all their hatred and contempt for school, then choose to release it only during the last couple months of Grade 12. People that I’ve gone to school with for 12 years that have been normally happy and content have suddenly grown horribly opposed to school, and have the urge to leave and enter the ‘real world’ as soon as physically possible. Whether that’s actually what they feel like, or if it’s just a kind of a ‘mask’ that they put on to make themselves seem more mature and adult-like, I don’t know.
2. “Awuh! I don’t want to leave! I want to be with you guys forever! Let’s all fail so we can stay together!”
This phrase isn’t heard as often as #1, but it’s definitely still present. Spoken by those who have a hard time coping with change, and would like nothing more than to keep doing what they’re doing for the rest of their life, even if it’s Math C30 and Calculus. I’m not sure if their desire is to stay with all their classmates, or if they simply don’t want to deal with life outside of High School.
—
Those are the two most widely expressed opinions that I’m aware of. As for myself, I don’t think I would put myself in either of those two categories. I think that I’m glad that High School is almost over, because I’m looking forward to University and studying something I actually enjoy (Computer Science). However, at the same time, I’m friends with pretty much every single person in my class, and once school is finished, everyone is going different directions. I just doesn’t seem fair that you spend 12 years of your life making friends and building relationships, then once Grade 12 is over you never see the majority of those people again. I think it’s this fact that I have so much trouble coping with.
Thank God for the miracle of technology, and thank the series of tubes for the invention of Facebook. It sure is a hell of a lot easier to keep in touch via Internet compared to snail mail.
I say finally, because picking one has been a long, horribly paved road I’ve traveled down. This quote is the one that they will read right after my name as I walk into the hall and onto the stage, therefore this is the quote that people will associate not only my name with, but my person as well. For example, if my grad quote would have been ‘White power.”, it would be assumed by hundreds of audience members that I am an active member of the KKK and believe that Caucasian is the greater race. I think it’s obvious why that wouldn’t be a very wise choice as far as quotes go, but you can see how people judge you. This is the reason why it took me so long to find a suitable one.
I went through quite a few before I found ‘the one’. There were a couple different ones by Douglas Adams that I enjoyed, and a few others from other honorary figureheads. However, none of them really seemed to fit. They were all either way too deep and serious, or they were meant to be funny and stupid. It reminded me briefly of the song Bicycle Race by Queen :
“I don’t want to be a candidate for Vienam or Watergate, ‘cuz all I want to do is BICYCLE, BICYCLE, BICYCLE…”
That expresses my feelings toward the choosing of my quote. I don’t want something that turns me into a philosopher or world leader. All I want is something easy-going and laid back. So, with that song stuck in my head, I got to work browsing pages upon pages of quotes, along with severaldifferenttags, but all returned little to no quality results.
Finally, I became bored of reading quotes and pointed my browser to Youtube. This is what I watched:
After the video was done, I had made up my mind. Monty Python, in all their brilliance and comedic wizardry, revealed to me the perfect grad quote. Light, optimistic, and funny (for those who are familiar with the comedy group); just what I was looking for. Those who get it will laugh, those who don’t will appreciate the simplicity, and those who are old and deaf will smile and nod in the knowledgeable sort of way that old deaf people like to nod.
