应几个朋友的要求,把儿子的演讲原稿发在此地.对了,当地的报纸还采访了他的,听说会登载在明天的报纸上.明天又要去车站买报纸了.嘿嘿.
Kevin Lee:
Well, as we all know, today
is a very important day. First off, I want to say happy birthday to
Katie ---and Justina ------. Now, I want you all to look to your
left. Now look to your right. Did you notice it? That’s right,
today is the one day that you can wear a hat into school. Oh, and
perhaps more importantly, let’s give it up for the Hinsdale South
Class of 2010: we made it!
All of us are going our
separate ways soon, and where we’re going, I promise you that all
cell phones, headphones, and headgear need not be turned off and
put away in your locker at 7:45. Nor will we need an assignment
notebook to go to the bathroom. No one’s going to be sitting
outside the lunchroom to make sure we don’t leave. No one’s going
to go around strategically locking the doors to stop us from going
to our locker after school.
I’m definitely going to miss
Hinsdale South. There’s something nostalgic about all the little
quirks that make this school what it is. I’m going to miss the
“What sauce?” lunch lady in the pasta line. I’m going to miss
sprinting through the halls every day to get to gym on time. I'm
going to miss climbing up and down the stairs with a twenty pound
backpack. I’ll probably even miss the freezing trek from the
student lot to the swimming doors for morning swim practice. OK, I
won’t miss that one, but I won’t forget the staff patrolling the
hallways ensuring our "safety." All of you really make the Hinsdale
South community what it is.
Now there are a few groups in our little community that we have to
thank tonight. First and foremost, I want to thank all the parents
of the graduating class. We don’t like everything you have to say …
at times it feels like you’re force feeding us your values, but
you’ve gotten us pretty far. I mean, we’re graduating high school
now, so you’ve all succeeded in raising us somehow. But I have just
one word of advice before we’re off to college. As Karl Marx once
said, “Sell a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. Teach a man to
fish, and you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.” So stop
teaching us to fish! You’ve guided and nurtured us for the past 18
years, and now is the time to believe and watch what we can do…and
sell us fish if we starve.
Next, we must thank the teachers. Thank you to every single teacher
in this school, some of which I’ve had the honor of learning from,
some of whom I have not. Whether you are a math, English, science,
foreign language, business, music, social studies, P.E., DHH, or
art teacher, next to our family, you have had the greatest impact
on our lives. Long after we forget who fought whom in World War II
or the Sparknotes version of The Great Gatsby, the skills that you
taught us will live on indefinitely. It’s the act of memorizing, of
reading, of writing, of understanding that you’ve truly taught us.
You’ve taught us to question what we are told and to be unafraid of
being different. Thank you.
Speaking of people that we
tend to question, let's talk about the administration and staff.
Though I’ve complained my fair share about the lack of air
conditioning in our school, I realize now that it’s all good – we
have turf. OK, but seriously, I realize that you are all like the
stage managers in one of our school plays. You really never get
that much recognition, no one realizes that you’re there, but
really, without you, the show would not go on. So Thank you.
And of course, we can’t forget the reason we're
here tonight - thank you to all the students of the Class of 2010.
I might not have seen eye to eye with you... I might not have ever
seen you before tonight, but I respect you all the same. There’s a
reason this school is so great. And it’s not because of the
waterfall in our courtyard. It’s because the students here are so
real. The diversity here is a great representation of the outside
world. I think in our prom group, we covered almost every race. Of
course, we have our racial challenges, but we realize that every
race – white, black, yellow, brown, and everything in between – are
like M&M’s. You can count them, separate them, or
put them all together, but in the end, they’re all the same
flavor.
Our lives are kind of like vehicles on the road.
The parents are the ones who physically buy the cars. We wouldn’t
be here without them. The teachers provide us the fuel that drives
our cars. We can live without them, technically, but we’re
definitely going to be pushing the car, not driving it. The
administration is the oil that keeps the car running smoothly, and
all of you are the other vehicles on the road. Some of you will
pass me by, some of you will stay with me for a while, and some of
you, including our two worst drivers, might almost hit me. Without
you, the roads would be empty. Now, we’re merging on to a new
highway. It’s a scary process, especially since we’re all fairly
new drivers. But with enough skill and maybe just a tad of luck,
we’ll make it on with no trouble.
Well, a lot has happened in the last four years –
we’ve made new friends, we’ve lost old ones, we survived a
devastating earthquake, we’ve watched our economy tank, and we’ve
watched our state senator become President of the United States. As
Barack Obama said when he won the Iowa caucus, “our time for change
has come.” When you walk away from here tonight, know that it is
time for us to set our imprints on the world and show them that if
we take the energy that we put into our food drive, our clubs and
sports, our grades, and our prom-night dancing – that if we take
that energy and put it to setting the world straight, then the
whole world might become a nice place to live.
Now, I’ll
end with three last tidbits of information. One: the square root of
the square root of 81 is 3. Two: your parents are indescribably
proud of you. Now would be a good time to ask for money. And three:
Congratulations to the Class of 2010!!!
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