Vie Bizarre: Casey, post your speech from yesterday in your blog

So, because Laura told me to, here’s the speech I gave last night at IB Senior Celebration:

Fellow students, teachers, parents, friends, Mr. McGonegal:

It’s been a crazy four years: sleepless nights, endless lectures, perpetual work, and bottomless cups of coffee. And now we’re growing up, about to venture out into a world where we have to do all of this grown-up stuff: get jobs, pay taxes, … get jobs. It almost seems impossible that these past four years have sneaked up on us so quickly. But, I will remind you that in the time since we entered the hallowed halls of PHUHS, so much has happened that we may have once deemed impossible. The Buccaneers won the Super Bowl, the Red Sox won the World Series, J-Lo and Ben broke up. So, maybe our progression into a big people school was inevitable.

But still, we’re all human. And humans will remember. Humans will reminisce. Humans will think back on the years we’ve spent roaming the hallways of PHU and remember them fondly. What will you remember? Will you remember how no matter where you sat, Señora Gleason feng suied you without fail? Will you remember Mr. Valdez’s unhealthy obsession with Julia Roberts? Or maybe it’ll be the way Pete Just would keep his desk absolutely barren (like his head).

Personally, I’ll remember all of the stuff I didn’t quite understand. Like matrices (sorry, Math Department…). Like who actually killed William Robinson. Like Mr. Coffman’s grading system. And like how in the world I am expected to eat a whole elephant.

To the parents here tonight: thank you for supporting your child through these last four years. Without your support, they wouldn’t be here. And if they weren’t here, I would have no friends. So, thank you. I’m sure they’ll thank you too, as it’ll make college that much easier. That is, they’ll thank you right after they get done screaming, “WHY?! WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS TO ME!?”

To the faculty and staff here tonight: Henceforth, you will be referred to as officers, Mr. Burkett and Ms. Lowry as marshals, and Dr. Brown as warden. You run a tight ship (especially you, Mrs. Kolhoff), but in the end we know that it’s for our betterment. Palm Harbor is the single best place we could be spending our young and malleable years. Thank you for training us to be responsible young people. And while I use the word “responsible” loosely, I’m sure that you know how much you have impacted our lives.

And finally, to the 40% of you who are NOT going to UF: It’s been a pleasure to have known you. I speak on behalf of everyone who is moving two and a half hours up the Interstate (two if you drive like we do) when I say that we will miss you dearly. The bonds we have formed on this campus are too strong to break, so make sure you keep in touch with us, wherever you go. And yes, that does mean “Facebook me!”

Folks, this is so surreal. Unlike the bouncy-bouncy of the moon landings and the chippy-chippy of the Great Pyramids, this is actually happening. You see the movie Grease and you think that a Danny Zuko-like graduation will never happen to you. But, short of a magic red convertible flying into the sky, it’s here. And it’s happening. Now we know that what once seemed so impossible, so far off in the distance, is truly possible. Now, it’s up to us to make the best of our own futures.

Thank you, Palm Harbor University High School. And thank you, everyone. We’re all in this together.

See you in Gainesville!

Take for example when I walked out to my car this morning. I thought it was a bit drafty. I looked down. I had forgotten to put on a shirt. I said to myself, “Self, you should probably go put on a shirt.”

I sat in my car for three minutes trying to regain the energy to walk back inside.

And this is for any teachers to whom I’ve had to turn in double-spaced papers since Tuesday: sorry for the ghetto fabulous paragraph formatting. All I had was Wordpad and an enter key.

The only thing that makes the two hour block that occurs every three days bearable are the cute and motivational signs on the walls of the mathematics classroom.

There’s the classic “Cute and cuddly is IN!” poster that features a picture of a cute kitten. While it doesn’t particularly stimulate me to take any integrals or find x in any way, I’ll be darned if that’s not the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

Or is it? There are also some posters on the wall that, in addition to being cute, have actual motivational messages and stimulating undertones. The only problem is that none of these slogans have anything to do with the photo with which they are presented.

There’s on with a picture of a kitten that has gone and gotten himself stuck in a water pitcher. Oh, you silly little kitty. It reads, “Half of being smart… is knowing what you’re dumb at.”

I’ll just ignore that ellipsis for the time being and focus on content. Being dumb has nothing to do with a cat in a pot, aside from the fact that the idea of a cat in a pot is pretty dumb. Maybe the sign makers were trying to tell us that they were no good at their jobs and, thus, they were halfway smart by planting a subtle message in the form of two pounds of adorable feline in one over sized jug.

This trend continues across the walls of the classroom. Apparently, our teacher is an avid fan of puppies, kittens, and little fragments of pep talks. And, you know, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Those little buggers make math fun.

Well, as fun as math can be.

Surprise.

After lunch, I was given the honor of riding in the school elevator for the first time in my academic career. I was on the ground level outside of Mr. Coffman’s room, complaining that I had to walk an unreasonable distance to the stairs so that I could get to my coaching class in Mr. Pete Just’s room – a location directly above where I was. I would have had to walk so far to get to a room that I could physically see.

That’s when Lizzie Wellings lent me her elevator key. God bless her.

The moral of the story: make friends with cripples, because they will make your day that much sweeter.

That was the easy part.

Our school is the home of the Hurricanes. Now tell me, what kind of mascot could one wear to represent a hurricane? The University of Miami has “Sebastian”:http://umsis.miami.edu/~rlangel/Traditions.htm, the Ibis; The Carolina Hurricanes have “Stormy”:http://www.carolinahurricanes.com/canesworld/stormy.asp, the Ice Hog; it seems that to make a costume an actual round hurricane would be impractical and really, really lame.

So, I’ve been asking around and here are some suggestions:
* A pirate (The school’s original mascot was going to be Captain Storm, until the administration nixed the idea.)
* A bird of some sort (UM folklore states that the Ibis is the last bird to leave before a hurricane and the first to return.)
* Poseidon (This fellow, while not the Greek god of storms – that’s Zeus’ domain – is the god of the ocean, which could apply readily to the whole hurricane theme.)
* A palm tree (This was Egle’s contribution, and Doug drew a gnarly schematic during our math class yesterday. I liked it until I got a general reaction from a few students who said it would be stupid.)

I have no more ideas.

So, please, throw out some wisdom, lest you get stuck with Tempest the Tree all season:

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During my wait, I got to listen to the conversations of multiple whining menopausal mothers who thought that the process was taking far too long. Granted, the sitting took a good while, but on the post card they received in the mail months ago that remained ignored until presently, it warns of a wait of about an hour.

Did they realize that Bryn-Alan Photography is in charge of each and every senior’s portrait every year? And did they realize that the photographers can only work in one studio because that is all they have? Probably not, as they are not necessarily in positions to be privy to that knowledge.

They failed to take into consideration the fact that these people were not sitting in the back and playing Yahtzee – they work their tails off to get children in and out in an attempt to make things go quasi smoothly.

I realize that I’m treading potentially hypocritical ground here, but I thought that such a social observation would be necessary before any of you jokers walk in to get your senior portrait and start complaining.

But in case you haven’t already heard, the new Co-editors in Chief for the 2005-2006 Aftermath Yearbook Staff at PHUHS are Christina Chan, Egle Vilkelyte, and myself.

You may go back to not caring.

Apparently, the cafeteria gave up on the antiquated ways of subservience to Velda Farms. Now, the good folks at Healthy Cow Milk are making the world a little brighter, one half pint at a time.

Not only does this stuff taste way better; the boxes are a billion times more interesting. Back in the day when we had to read some corny joke and turn the carton entirely around to see the punch line, everyone had a pain in their arms from all the turning and a pain in the brain from the horrible, horrible joke. It was like watching television on an old black and white set while having a hand standing contest underwater – just silly and exhausting.

Now, however, we have clever quips at a horizontal level right there at our fingertips. Among the myriad of silly sentences, my personal favorite is, “It takes 100 cartons of Healthy Cow Milk to be as fast as the slowest Healthy Cow.”