Graduates, get ready to be confused

High school graduation is a strange time. The week before graduation is typically a blast - parties, boobs, and so on. However, the summer after you graduate is pretty fucked up, for a few reasons. First, you're still couped up with your parents. Realizing that walking across that stage is not an immediate token of independence is pretty shitty.

Worse than that, I think, is old people spouting off wisdom that is, well, old. Today, I came across an article in the News Democrat Journal that perfectly fits this description. The author, Fred Nugent (not to be mistaken for his more well-known brother, Ted) has an odd way of appealing to the kiddos. Let's take a look.

Just got home from Seckman's graduation, and as I sit here in front of the computer, my mind wanders back to my own graduation, some 33 years ago as the Class of '74 marched across the stage in Alton, Ill., and received diplomas.

Let me set the stage and the mood of that year. Our country's involvement in Vietnam was winding down and though that conflict officially ended the year before, in 1973, the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon in April before our graduation.

This is a weird bit of revisionist history, because Freddy boy, Saigon fell in 1975 - almost a full year AFTER you graduated from high school.

The first UPC code would be scanned in June of 1974-a package of Wrigley's gum at a supermarket in Ohio. Evel Knievel would fail to cross the Snake River Canyon in September of that year. Leonardo DiCaprio, Jake Plummer, and Dale Earnhardt Jr. were all newborns.

Now this really puts things into perspective. Jake Plummer was a newborn around the time this guy graduated from high school. A name that resonates in the hearts and minds of high school seniors everywhere. Jordan. Woods. Shaq. Kobe. LeBron. Plummer. It's like when I graduated, and my dad said "you know son, Steve Bono was only 6 when I was your age?" It changed my life. Here are other sports equivalents to mediocre, semi-retired NFLer Jake Plummer:

Baseball: Richie Sexson, Raul Mondesi, Ron Gant
Basketball: Rik Smits, John Starks
Golf: Davis Love III
Boxing: Buster Mathis, Jr.

You get the point.

But as we sat there, we were entrusted with much of the same knowledge that the class of 2007 received earlier tonight: "You only live once, so what's stopping you from going for it!" or "The future is there for you to change".

"The future is there for you to change"

And the past, too!