Graduation and Tarzan
/Our Alma Mater,
Thou art strong and true
Thy name shall live in the deeds thy children do.
Thy gift will be in life our guide,
We will be true to thee,
Will Rogers High.
Remember graduation? Here's my ode to graduation day:
A GRADUATION POEM
By POPS
O' the thoughts that ran through
The mind under that mortarboard
The emotions that quickened the heart
And stirred the butterflies
In the belly beneath that robe.
Mission accomplished! Oh, crap; what now?!
I was a member of the Class of '69, Will Rogers High School, Tulsa, Oklahoma. I wasn't much of a member really; I only went to school there my senior year. Prior to that I was a Jenks Trojan!
BTW: the term Alma Mater is Latin, meaning "nurturing mother". Obviously it is used most often these days to refer to the school one attended, but it also refers to the school song or hymn, as in the case of the lyrics at the beginning of this post.
2014 grads of Oklahoma Baptist University. (borrowed from the OBU Facebook page without permission)
Though my time at Will Rogers High was short, I grew to love that little song. The tune is as nice as the lyrics. It's kind of cool that it is literally the school's Alma Mater--the song, it's about our Alma Mater--the school, and it's written using the literal meaning, "nurturing mother", as a metaphor of the school as mother and the students as the "children."
If you're still with me, which is probably unlikely, how about digging through whatever box might contain the old school tassel, or grab a school yearbook. Reminisce a bit. Then say to yourself, "Life is full of transitions and graduations, I survived that big one and I'll survive the next." Now move your tassel to the other side (figuratively of course), and let's take the summer off.
Tarzan and the fam.
Oh, one more lesson before we go: My friend Grady Nutt observed an important life lesson from Tarzan. For those who don't know Tarzan lore, his favorite mode of travel through the Jungle was swinging from one vine to the next. Grady pointed out that if Tarzan had been afraid or unwilling to let go of one vine to grab the next, he would have been known as a real swinger, but would have never gotten anywhere.