from mid-may to mid-july--the crazy life i live
sorry about the long absence... i've been very busy lately. plus i didn't have access to a computer with internet. so back off! so where to begin...i'll try to mention senior sneak in as nice a way possible. it's a tradition where the senior class gets together one last time in a confined space under the false pretense of having one last hoorah but what is really just an excuse to prank one another and piss us all off just before graduation so we can all hate each other in the end. lets just say that you have to be a certain kind of demented to come back from that trip having thoroughly enjoyed your classmates. i'm sure that are some... but i wasn't one of them. as Tom Nelson told my mother, the ones who enjoyed it should still be in middle school, and the ones who didn't were probably ready to graduate last year. don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad, i at least know who is worth hanging out with now (not that i didn't know before, this trip just rewrote it in BIG RED letters).
the very next day was regional track. and it must have been a horrible day for blue valley girls--none of us qualified. on the other hand, it was a tremendous day for girls high jump--the four qualifiers cleared 5'1" and one girl cleared 5'3". unfortunately, i only cleared 4'8". which was good considering the amount of stress i had on me and the too few hours of sleep and the horrible stiffness in my neck all that day and the next from sneak. i still wish i could have cleared 5'0" sometime this year. i was soooo close at the Manhattan meet--closer than Briana Bruna and the girl from Wakefield.
and finally, graduation. i don't know what to say except that it probably looked like i was the only one who did anything in that class. seriously. it lasted 40 minutes (thank god) and wasn't terribly hot this year like it had been every previous year. they changed the day to saturday and the time to earlier in the afternoon in hopes of keeping the place bearable. anyway, i was part of the last pair to walk in, seated on the inside of the left row. Mr. Winter started it off with a dead mike, but when that was finally finished Dustin got up for the salutatorian speech. we'll just say that it was awful in the worst sense of the word and spare the kid further shame. personally, though, i still think the 3rd place kid deserved it more. but maybe that was just because he was my friend. then it was time for my speech as valedictorian. everyone told my how good it was afterwards, but i'll let anyone who wasn't there read it and form their own opinions.
This year in the play, I stumbled over some lines in our Friday night performance that set the crowd laughing. There were some classmates on stage that told me how surprised they were to hear me mess up. Caitlin, Miss Perfect, stumbling in the clutch. Well, I can tell you that I am far from perfect. When I first started thinking about this speech, I had no idea what I would say. I didn't want to give the same speech that happens many years, about how great a class we were and how much I would miss high school. Honestly, that is not the idea I want to leave you with. So I did what our teachers have been trying to get us to do for years--I researched it.
I read some good speeched--some inspirational, some funny, but mostly, I found by reading these that I wanted to write the speech my own way. I wanted it to have a little bit of "Caitlin flare." However, I did find one great idea from a speech entitled "Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah." It reads, "Graduations are often likened to a door closing on the past behind us. We're looking ahead to the future, closing the door behind us, storing the past in a closet. Some of us will look into that closet repeatedly to reminisce about our bygone youth. Others will pick through it occasionally, remembering the good parts. Some will slam the door shut, push all their weight against it, throw 5 dead-bolt locks across the door, wedge it shut with a chair, and run as if there were a rabid animal in there, not looking back."
That speech goes on to say that our future will be affected by our past, no matter what we do with that closet door. So now I add my own advice to this. We should be able to more on from our past and not be held back by old defeats. We should also be able to build the rest of our lives on something more substantial than just what we accomplished in high school. So I suggest we leave the door slightly ajar, so we can peek in when we need to. We shouldn't swing it wide open and try to jump back in, but we also shouldn't run away never looking back. Remember our teachers also taught us to learn from our history.
High school represents only a stepping-stone on the pathway through our lives. Like the Robert Frost poem that Mrs. Shultz taught us in 6th grade says, that path had many bumps and turns. I worked very hard to be standing here today, with scholarships and honors to prove it. But in the end, being the Valedictorian is really only a number. Every one of you has that same potential to be standing here instead. So my advice to you, my fellow seniors, is to grab that potential, twist it and bend it any and every way you need, and make it work for you.
Thank you.
some people told me that i didn't sound or look very nervous (but that may just be in comparison to Dustin), but my legs were shaking so bad that I swear I was making a tap dance number with my heels on the stage. thankfully, i had several encouraging faces to seek out in my class (namely the one person who gave me the most crap for my mistakes in the play) and in the crowd, so that calmed me down a little. i then proceeded to explain that our senior gift was on its way. i sure i was still shaking when i sat down in my chair off stage and Mr. Schreiber started speaking. i think he was just as nervous as i was, he's a new teacher that is not used to speaking in front of crowds of his students' families and various community members. after that, i was again called forward to start the senior video which i and another student in the class below had created. it turned out very well i think. i'm still waiting to have our copy of that and the ceremony. when we walked, i was second or third out the door to hug all our teachers. then the line of endless hugs from mostly people i didn't know or didn't care to remember. afterward i felt like taking a shower. my coach and mom's good friend Bridgett was the only one who almost made me cry--she was near the end and i'm not entirely sure why she was the only one with such a huge effect on me. i guess she's had a lot of influence in my life.
as for my party, someone should have told me how much of a headache it is to be the center of attention! but i guess then i wouldn't have invited so many people. my great grandma came and even remembered to bring jason's graduation card from a couple years back! she's a blast. i was exhausted by the time it was all over and was falling asleep on the floor watching scrubs with my best friend Dana and jason and morgan steele--back from the Navy stationed in Japan.
the next few weeks are really a blur. i worked for the first week after graduation, then mom, dad and I went up to Montana for a week, then when i got back everything seemed lost in a haze of boxes and wrapping and tape. my only breaks were to see Pirates 3 with a couple friends and hanging out with Ryan. mom and i left sunday morning early with the dogs in tow and didn't get off the the road for 22 hours. hardly any of which she woudl let me drive. granted, I-80 was terrifying for the hour i drove on it--i've never seen so much traffic in my life! i swear every second i thought i was going to end up killing us all. the dogs snore and were about as stressed out as us. i don't recommend trying to drive from Kansas to Montana in one day unless your superman, or jason.
so there's my update--i'm heading to Missoula for orientation this tuesday, then the week after that to California for FCCLA nat'ls, then back to Kansas to pick up the rest of our stuff. as of today still waiting on the moving truck to arrive--should be tomorrow or the next day at the latest.
posted by Caity @ 2:00 PM
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