By Laurie Frost
Today I was thinking about my impending graduation.
If you think this is going to be a Cheney-Speaking-at-Commencement standoff, I''m sorry to disappoint. I don''t care who speaks at commencement, and I think I have good reasons.
First, all graduation speeches are the same. To prove my point, I''ve written a mad-lib of a typical graduation speech, which you graduates-to-be are welcome to fill out and e-mail back to me:
Speaker: To all the graduates of (college name): (felicitation). After all your time thinking you''d never escape from (Course name ), you can breathe easily. You''ve done (x number) of hours studying (school subject) in (open study area) of the (Building name). It''s starting to pay back.
Speaker: You''ve accomplished (accomplishment). You all should be (emotion) of yourselves. As (dead person) once said, '(inspiring quotation about heights, depths, and possibly flying).' I think that applies specifically to the graduates of (college).
Good luck and happy (verb pertinent to the profession), graduates. May you (insert bad paraphrase of former inspiring quotation from dead person).
If you doubt my prowess on predicting graduation speeches, allow me to present to you some (largely) accurate statistics, broken down for your numerical convenience:
I''m number seven of eight kids.
All eight of us graduated from high school, so that''s eight high school graduations, plus a handful of grade school 'promotions.'
All six of my older siblings have graduated college, so that makes another six graduation ceremonies, multiplied by two (commencement and convocation), which totals 12 college graduations.
Of those six siblings, five went on to grad school, which meant another two ceremonies apiece. That makes 10 advanced college graduation ceremonies.
To top things off, my mom went back to law school when I started BYU, so I attended her law school graduation ceremonies. That makes two more.
This makes 32 total graduation ceremonies (give or take) I''ve attended, all of which lasted approximately 100 years at a stretch.
However, I acknowledge that not all graduations are so formulaic. Take my eighth grade promotion, for example. I sat nervously in my chair, all dolled up in a little blue dress my mom made me and wearing these snazzy patent leather shoes, greased with Vaseline for the occasion. I watched all my friends - last names A through F - heel-toe it across the stage with an expression akin to nausea when they suddenly called my name.
'Laurie. Jayne. Frost.' they said, and looked expectantly at me as I climbed the stage.
I shook hands with my principal, accepted my diploma and - to this day I don''t know what possessed me - busted out a Frost Brothers Original dance move, called 'The Skywalker.' The Skywalker ends in a pose reminiscent of the illustration on the original 'Star Wars: A New Hope' movie poster, the one where an unnaturally burly Mark Hamill is holding his light saber like a lightening rod.
The crowd went crazy. I skipped beamingly off the stage to sit with my family. My tight-lipped mom didn''t speak to me for a good hour and my brothers mocked me for the next couple of weeks.
It was the best graduation ever.
Since you can''t possibly hope for a cooler, more complete and disgusting exhibition of geekiness at your own graduation, I leave you with this instead.
Good luck, all you graduates from (college). I wish you (vanilla description of possible future happinesses).
Laurie Frost is graduating from BYU and will be resigning her post as self-proclaimed humorist and chief irritator at The Daily Universe.