He was the unpopular kid. Nobody knew his name, he wasn’t on any sport teams, clubs, or anything along the lines. But he was smart. And, as a joke, his class voted him as valedictorian. With that title came the privilege of giving a speech at the graduation ceremony. He came prepared with a cliche-loaded speech approved by his principal. When he got up there, he started in on his speech.
He was finding his prepared speech difficult to read as he told the audience of students (who were laughing at him most of the time he was up there), parents and school board officials that his class had “arrived at school strangers and now leave as friends.”
With that, he paused and crumpled up the paper that held his carefully typed string of cliches. And continued….
He quit following his pre-arranged script from there.
The reason I’m linking to this story is that I know many of the folks reading this were like me in high school. Granted, I wasn’t your typical nerd — I actually lettered in sports, and not just academics and band — but I knew what the kid was going through. High school kids are ruthless and always pick on the little guy when, in reality, it’s the little guy who will be the successful one in the future and many of those punk bastards will be asking us for jobs down the road.
OK, done ranting. Carry on. Link via Waxy’s Links.