Damn straight. One wonders how many will take your advice. Too few I'm sure. But a very good essay none the less. That is what the schools should teach but don't. I wrote something very similar to my daughter and presented it to her on the anniversary of her eighteenth birthday. Twenty five years later she told me she still has it for reference and admitted it scared her silly at the time she first read it but now feels it was perhaps the best single guidance she ever received. I have also learned that parenting never ends. She is a senor citizen now but still uses me for guidance to this day, as does my son. Both are doing just fine and they deserve the credit. Does my p***e of them show?

Some of you are done with school. It is that season after all. You wore the hat. You wore the gown. You partied like it was 1979. You are now ready to address the world. Hello, world. And you’re special and you know this is true because everyone your whole life long has been telling you that you’re special. Good things are surely coming your way.

I h**e to be the bringer of bad news but adult life isn’t much like anything you’ve experienced so far. In the real world, there aren’t any consolation prizes and no one gives a crap about you. Worse than that in the real world everyone is trying to screw you in one way or another. There are no safe spaces unless you get a union job and even in such employment you’ll have to keep your head down.

What you’re going to find is that life isn’t about all the wonderfulness you’ve been taught or actually more like indoctrinated to believe. Life is about survival and procreation. Whether you live half naked in the forest or take a helicopter ride to work in the city, you must work to survive. How well you survive depends on your work ethic, your ability to adapt to change quickly, and how smart and hard you work. If you fail to procreate wh**ever is unique and special about you dies with you.






This is the harsh reality of the world you are entering. You will not be traveling the world with your surfboard and if you do, you are throwing away some of the most productive years of your life. You don’t need a year “off” you’ve been in Disney World your entire life and the sooner you face reality and face it head on, the better off you’ll be in every way.
From this point on life will scare the crap out of you every second of every day. You’ll have to pay the car, insurance, apartment, electricity, water, gas, oil, cable, internet, phone every single month for the rest of your life no matter what happens to you and that is even before you take one bite of a sandwich. You’re going to have to figure out how to do that and you’ll be starting on the bottom no matter how fresh the ink is on that sheep’s cloth.

So get a grip and snap out of it. Being an adult isn’t wonderful it is hard work and often frightening. Bad things are going to happen to you and those closest to you and you’ll have to be ready for them. The time has come for you to put away childish things.

It isn’t all doom and gloom. If you do well you’ll retire to a nice golf course community and buy yourself a golf car that looks like a Hummer or a Dune Buggy. Your children and grandchildren will come down for Spring Break and you’ll visit them for Christmas. There will be people who love you to take care of you when you are no longer capable. You’ll watch generations blossom before you and see your own legacy before you pass into the great beyond.

If you don’t screw it up.



Good luck.