I’ll never forget when I graduated 5th
grade. I made a short speech because I was vice president of the school student
council (to my sister who was president) when being in that position mattered.
I wasn’t at all worried, as a matter of fact, I was excited. The thought of
speaking to 300 or so parents felt like such an “impactful” thing to do at the
time. I remember I wore a suit and tie with dress shoes half a size bigger than
my feet. To be in that moment was magical. I swear to you, when I spoke, there
wasn’t a sound in the gym. Not from the students, not from the parents. When I
was done, they clapped for me, and as I walked back to my seat, my fifth grade
teacher was in tears. The graduation ended, and I went home with my family to
celebrate. The weird thing about all this is, besides the fact that this was
the first time I’ve ever seen someone cry because of a speech, even after all
these years, after the words I spoke on that stage have left my memory, and the
speech just became a part of the piles and piles of documents my family keeps in
the basement, I still have people, whom I have never met, come up to me and
tell me they remember that moment. Now, I don’t mean countless amounts of
people in the street wait for me to tell me this, but those who have the chance
to speak to me in school or when I’m at a local store waiting in line to pay,
one of the reasons they say they remember me is because of that speech. And
that’s a great moment to be remembered by. Something sort of funny is that that
wasn’t the only time I have ever made a speech. In my 8th grade
graduation I was chosen to be the male student representative of my school’s
graduating class. That speech, for some odd reason, didn’t settle in as well
with the parents as my previous speech, and I don’t really know why people were
bewildered and even a little angry by the time I was done, and I don’t think I
will ever know. Anyway, I enjoyed speaking on those two occasions, and
hopefully I’ll be able to do that again someday.
*I
want to dedicate this post to my little sister and, who will be graduating from the
fifth grade tomorrow, and my big bother who just graduated from high school (Although it’s just the fifth grade, and she has a
long way to go, it’s still worth celebrating).
P.E.N.T.C.I.
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