This is an important time for you kids, finally breaking out of the mold to greet the world with open arms. Your high school graduation is a time of enlightenment that you’ll never forget, as you walk across that gymnasium one final time, remembering all of the good times and fantasizing about what life’s got in store for you next. Images flash through your mind about the time when you “borrowed” the school mascot and painted it green, and the time that you filled the school’s swimming pool with jello the night before the big swim meet, and all of those other times spent being rebellious because you were young and wild and free. The doors that were closed for so many years are about to open before your very eyes, and you honestly won’t know whether to stay or go, so what better way to celebrate than by getting stoned out of your gourd and banned from participating in the commencement ceremony?!

Yeah, that sounds about right – let’s just throw it all away for a couple of hours of distorted perception, followed by an evening spent in the local pen, a big fine to cover, and a nice black mark on your police record come morning – quite an entrance into adulthood, if I do say so myself! Seriously, most college professors look forward to hearing about all of the brainless, wacky-tobaccy-induced altercations that their new classes have gotten themselves into the previous year – nothing makes a teaching staff feel more at ease than knowing that the incoming freshman class has a rap sheet that makes most hip hop artists look like altar boys…

Sure, I was a kid once…and not that long ago, I might add…but I still couldn’t possibly understand why anyone would do something this stupid with the end of such an exciting ride in plain sight! You know the drill – the principal gathers the class a few months before graduation time and congratulates the class, but also warns them that they’re not finished just yet and to “…take it easy…” and thus it usually takes about four or five easy days before at least half a dozen individuals have been picked up for drug and/or alcohol charges and banned from the ceremony to come. The way I see it, that’d roughly be the equivalent of you or I knowing that the big promotion was just around the corner and then sleeping with the boss’s wife instead of being on our best behavior! “Things are going really great around here and they’re just about to get even better – let’s taunt the system to see if we can’t get demoted back to the mail room before they start handing out company stock…”

Granted, graduation isn’t necessarily the biggest deal for some high school students, but regardless I’d bet my neighbor’s stereo system that their parents give slightly more than a hoot about if their son or daughter gets to walk across the stage in that sweltering gymnasium with the rest of their class that fateful day! We can all agree on this because it’s usually a week or so after their kid gets busted that the parents step forward and demand that he or she be allowed to participate because “…they didn’t mean any harm” or “…kids will be kids” or “…I gave it to them as a graduation present!” The scary part is that most of these young adults could probably go so far as to burn down the chess team’s life-sized, paper mache tournament set and they would still have the support of their parents because, well, their parents are idiots…

No, follow me on this one – teachers and school guidance counselors take responsibility for shaping the minds of our youth for a whopping twelve years, but when it comes time to graduate and venture forth into the “real world,” it’s equally important, if not even more so, to shape their character as well. And don’t get me wrong – I’m certainly not saying that everyone should be bred to leave high school as both salutatorian and captain of the advanced mathematics squad, but maybe being aware of a little concept called discretion might keep junior from sitting on the sidelines during the last game, or sleeping with his boss’s wife, or grabbing that prosecuting attorney’s ass at clearly the wrong place and time! For those of you who need it spelled out – yeah, I’m blaming the parents!

So to the graduates – I know that there’s going to be a certain amount of partying going on, and you really don’t do anything those last two months of your senior year anyways, and everybody’s doing it…including that fine cheerleader that you’ve been eying since freshman year and would love to bang just once before she heads off to junior college, but don’t do it! Unless you have absolutely no qualms about telling your mother that you won’t be marching during commencement because you opted to instead get high as a kite with the rest of the percussion section on the way home from that band festival, don’t do it! There will be plenty of time to be wild and reckless while you’re off at college, or out backpacking through Europe, or even during your 15-minute breaks working at the iHOP, so for the time being – don’t do it!

Your mother will thank you when you’re old enough to understand, and you won’t have to endure my writing another column about your negligence…well, at least not about that! Congratulations, class of 2004 – smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em…but only they happen to be legitimate tobacco products, and even then, only if you’re at least eighteen years of age. Otherwise, just smile and enjoy the ride…