642 Things to Write About
Part 1/642
First newsletter featuring the newest Helpful Snowman Project: Writing about the 642 things to write about from the book 642 Things to Write About!
What an exciting new endeavor! That you voted on!
So if you’re disappointed, just remember that it’s your fault and democracy never, ever works.
I decided that instead of going through the items in the book, one by one, I’d flip around until I found something that tickled my fancy, “My fancy” being the name I use for, wait, no, never mind, that’s a Batman and Robin joke, not fit for this newer, classier endeavor. Although I will admit to, now that I have some momentum, singing the line from the Reba McEntire song “Fancy” that goes “Fancy don’t let me down!” when I’m nude in the mirror looking at the body part I’ve nicknamed Fancy.
Here’s the first THING TO WRITE ABOUT:
You are the high-school valedictorian. Write your valedictory address.
It’s graduation season, seems appropriate. Let’s do it!
Dear People I Go To School With, Well, Not Anymore, But Up To And Including Today,
I don’t know if this is how you start something like this, if you put in a thing at the beginning like it’s a letter. Sorry, I’ve never given a graduation speech before because I’ve never done a graduation before. I mean, I probably did some kind of bullshitty 5th grade graduation or something, but that’s utterly meaningless, right? Only really valid for like Make-a-Wish kids who are lucky to have survived that long?
…
…
Please don’t be distracted by the fact that I just spent about 30 seconds in complete silence while I switched my graduation cap tassel from one side to the other. I have no idea which side it’s supposed to be on, and looking at you, and a bunch of you having it on one side, but I’m facing you, so for me it’s flipped, sorry, this is just messing with my brain a little, lol.
I stand before you all today as class valedictorian, a fact that should fill you all with a deep, deep shame, and a fact that should terrify those of you in the audience who are a few short years away from turning over the world to a generation that I am the smartest of. The smartest in? The smartest to—see what I mean? I’m not that smart, but somehow I got the highest grades in the entire class? Yikers.
Now, some will probably attribute this to the mathletes’ bus crashing and causing the horrific deaths of many, many of the best and brightest students. But let’s not dwell on that, let’s save that dwelling process for a place it can be monetized, specifically my YouTube channel where I go over the tragedy in detail, minute-by-minute, and guess what the skin of students of different races smells like as it burns.
Yes, that’s the kind of thing the valedictorian is up to. Eesh, huh? I’d make that gesture right now of pulling at my shirt collar, but I’m not wearing a collared shirt. I’m not actually wearing much of anything under this robe. I’m 18, lonely moms in the audience. Just, you know, in case you want to do a little prima nocta, which, as valedictorian, I understand to be a Latin term for having sex with a mom, sex that will certainly be disappointing for you, on many levels, and so meaningful for me that I will kind of ruin your life for a brief period because I’m too young to understand the difference between sex and love, specifically the difference between ejaculating in my pants before I can remove them and love.
And, sure, let’s just address this now: Me being valedictorian probably also has a lot to do with a bunch of the smartypants kids boycotting graduation because of some war in some other country. You know how those too-good kids are, always up in arms about something happening in some foreign place where they probably don’t even have meme coins.
Despite the school administration’s threat to bar those who boycotted from being valedictorian, those guys really stuck to their guns harder than a school shooter with a tube of Krazy Glue and a real mad-on for jocks or whatever.
I might not be the smartest of the smarts, but I’m the smartest of the dumbs and the smartest of everyone hear today, so I guess all we can do is you shut the fuck up and I’ll share with you some of the wisdom that helped propel me to this place on the stage.
We all learned a lot in school lo these last 12 or so years. We learned that government provided lunches are pretty terrible, a stark warning about staying out of the penal system. We learned about the OTHER penal system, the penis one, and what a vas deferens is and a epididymis is: a bunch of cords and crap god stuffed in your balls to make it really hurt when something hits you in the crotch. The balls really are god’s junk drawer. Just cables and weird blobs that don’t do anything until they do something that almost kills you.
We learned about just how many times a music teacher can screen John Tesh: Live at Red Rocks before someone questions the value of an entire class of students watching a balding man, who cannot gracefully accept the hair-pulling hand of father time, bang on a piano, an instrument our school never gave us access to, for 2 hours.
I’d like to give a shoutout to some teachers who really did make a difference, though, who went the extra mile to make high school a little more tolerable.
I’d like to do that, but you all really were phoning it in, eh? I mean, I get it, you get paid for shit. Frankly, I’d be suspicious if any of you were doing a good job, I’d assume you were compensating for being a truly horrendous human being, probably a basement full of dead squirrels you’d intentionally run over with your car, crushing their back halves and squatting by the roadside to watch the life leave their tiny black eyes.
I suppose I should give some advice before I’m through here, so, um, let me just say that silverware separators are a scam, you don’t need one, just put all the silverware in a drawer. It’s fine. Nobody can force you to separate that shit. Sure, if we were all immortal, why not spend a cumulative 50 hours of your life putting forks with forks in a little slot? But I assume none of you are immortal, at least not yet, because if you were, you’d probably have absorbed enough knowledge to at least best me in terms of being high school valedictorian. Although…maybe THAT’S the explanation, maybe all of you are vampires, and being valedictorian would be too much exposure, so you had to hang back, constantly getting worse grades than me. Which you managed, somehow, so kudos to you all on that front. Not an easy task. Not what you imagined devoting energy to when you became a vampire, eh? Thought it’d be all punching werewolves and sleeping with babes in coffins, did you?
Well, they’re playing me off now with that one Green Day song that we all voted on to be “our” song, a dumb thing that like 10 students get super passionate about and will still gripe on like 25 years from now, even though the rest of us probably won’t even remember what our graduation song was anyway.
In closing, I’d just like to leave you with our school motto: If you liked what you saw here today, don’t forget to smash that Like button, follow, and subscribe.