"Graduation address"
delivered by poet Scott Beal
on 2007-6-15
at the "5th grade graduation ceremony"
at Burns Park school in Ann Arbor.


To the Illustrious Graduates of the Institution

What I am about to suggest you do,
you should not do, not here, not now
that you are wrapped in fancy clothes
like your own graduation presents,
as if you were undercover agents or new 
superheroes trying on secret identities,
and a corps of cameras is standing by to bag
the moment, the proud moment, the one
instant in all your life when, as a moth
cracks its cocoon, as a hunk of coal
is compressed to a gem, you transform
from fifth grader to graduate, to an alumnus of 
the Burns Park Elementary School. Look at your
parents.  Look how proud you've made them.  They should
probably take you to DQ for sundaes after this.  They should
even let you stay up late devouring sugar
and watching terrible movies, they are that proud
and they should be, because you have completed
more than a curriculum: you have survived
a complex experiment in which every object
littering the Burns Park playground is a secret switch 
directing the flow of brain-boosting radio waves
from an underground transmitter, and that's why 
you aren't allowed to pick them up during recess, 
and why if you're caught shifting a few leaves or twigs
you must replace each one in its original position.
Otherwise, theres no telling how that radiation
would react with the top secret chemicals added
to certain dishes in the cafeteria, such as the hot dogs
they turn greenish and bounceable.  You've seen things.
You've done experiments of your own.  You've tested
the bounceability of hot dogs, and you've tested 
the relative edibleness of a Burns Park bean burrito 
to squirrels (finding: non-edible) using the scientific
method you learned from Mrs. Pryce, just one
of the many nuggets of knowledge which this ceremony 
officially recognizes you as having mastered.

But there is always the danger of forgetting
(after all, even your parents and teachers once were wise 
fifth graders themselves). So when you get home, 
away from cameras trained on every twitch,
what you must do, even if you're from Mrs. Pryce's class
and did not get to see Mr. Cramer do this in person,
is to lift your shirt, shove out your belly, and shout
It's the Navel Academy! while making explosive
battle noises with your mouth.  And believe it:
its the Navel Academy and it's armed and ready
to protect everything you know in your gut
as an esteemed Burns Park graduate:
	the importance of multiplying your identities
with nicknames, whether Tezzy or Jalo,
Stoshy or Goofy, Squince, Treo, Lou Lou Bell, KK, 
Mar Mar, Na Na, Banana, Jolly Rancher, Jellybean, 
Whopper, PT Cruiser, Lucho, Pluto,
Sushi Pie Moregravy Pleasecheeseky, and about forty more;
	how to be it by shutting your eyes and flailing your arms
around the play structure, without tripping or ever falling off, 
finally cornering someone only to have them drop 
silently to the ground, then calling "lava" a half-second before
they can climb back on;
	and how to not be "it" by slipping just out of reach
when the one you lava'd comes flailing blindly at you, 
	how not to put periods in the middle of sentences, nor commas at the ends;
	how to bring a person to life in a month-long process
from rough sketch to cardboard cutout to multicolored papier-mâché  
to yarn, buttons, and accessories;
	and how to bring a person to life in a separate process
known as reproductive health;
	how to divide fractions;
	how algebra is balancing pans on a scale;
	how a ghost that turns off your teachers kitchen light
whenever she switches on the dining room light is probably
not a vengeful spirit from the realm of the dead but rather a mixed-up
electrical circuit;
	how your own heart sucks oxygen-poor blood 
from the veins and exchanges it for oxygen-rich blood 
from the lungs, then spurts it back through arteries 
to energize every cell in your bad self; 
	how your heart is a muscle, how its been working out 
constantly for more than a decade now, more than 90,000 hours
of nonstop isometric exercise, its that relentless 
and that strong, so that you're ready to face anything, 
even the eighth graders at Tappan who are  6' tall and 200 lbs.
and ride to school on snarling razorback boars, 
and the lockers at Tappan with their 16-digit combinations
that change daily and give a strong electric shock
if you make one mistake, and the novel reports at Tappan 
which must be 5 pages typed in two different languages 
and come due twice a week, and even the principal 
at Tappan whose bristling mustache is a living organism
which leaves his face after the morning bell rings 
and creeps from classroom to classroom to crawl
into the ear of any student it finds
not listening closely enough to the teacher.

And even if any of this was true, you'd handle it, you 
scholar-sculptor-composer-choreographer-multi-instrumentalist-
researcher-performer-athlete-architect-journalist types
are the most multi-talented crop of little Leonardo da Vincis
this side of the Italian Renaissance.  You've felt the wind
in your throat down the length of the Ohiyesa zip line.  
You've saddled up a giraffe and faced down dinosaurs
in the walls.  You've tallied the price of every appliance 
Bob Barker can throw at you. As if outlasting eleven 
Michigan Februaries isnt enough Winter Survival for anyone, 
you've been bussed to the boondocks in the dead of February 
and left to fetch your own wood, and stack it, 
and spend match after match to get it lit, and eat nothing
but what you manage to cook over that fire.
You've scratch-and-slipped clay into castle and landscape.
You've fueled up on sugar from the secret candy drawer.

In case an evil history teacher at Tappan sticks you in a time machine
and sends you to the 1700s, youve learned all the dances
youll need to survive in that harsh, alien environment
long enough to rewire the circuits to send yourselves back
to the present.  And in case you cross the time machines wires
and send yourselves far into a future in which leaders are chosen 
by their ability to create innovative compositions
using complex combinations of percussion instruments, 
from shimmering chimes to xylophones, kettles and snares
to folding chairs, tap shoes to tambourines,
youll have the instant star power to truly become
the leaders of tomorrow.  And if instead of that far-fetched scene
the time machine drops you into the future that's coming
for you all too soon, the adult world of work and worry,
this arbitrary and absurd world that doesnt make any sense 
to your parents either, youll be ready for that too.
You've learned recess after recess how to navigate the arbitrary 
and the absurd, so when your bosses tell you the equivalent
of 'you must not walk and chew at the same time', or 'dont play
in groups of more than eight -- but dont exclude anyone',
and believe me, they will, I've had enough bosses to know,
then you'll be ready with your own dose of the ridiculous
which rides with you always, just there, under your shirt,
making little rumbling noises before lunch which might mean
youre hungry or might mean theres a battle shaping up
for the Navel Academy, your force for truth and goodness,
reminding you forever of what you learned in fifth grade,
what you were capable of, how,
from the peak of Magic Mountain to the auditorium stage,
Burns Park taught you to conquer anything.