American Idle

I'm going to miss American Idol when it turns 8:00 tonight. The competition is over. Kris is the champ and Adam has won legions of fans of his own.

I didn't watch every minute of every episode this season, but I'd been rooting for Kris for a long time. He's the kind of singer that I would have had a huge crush on when I was a pre-teen and I would have purchased Tiger Beat magazines with his picture the cover. I liked his singing too, of course.

But I gotta hand it to Adam though. WHAT A PERFORMER! And what I admired most about him is that he was exactly himself every single performance, even if he knew it would cost him snide comments from Simon and votes from the audience. It is a risk to do that, and I think it will make him millions.

I'm not very good either at trying to be something I'm not. Thirty (30!!!) years ago, I decided to enter a competition to give an address at my high school graduation. The valedictorian would give a speech (I was 13th in the class of 500+) and so would another talented student with a well-written and crisply delivered speech.

I tried soaring, uplifting speech after motivating speech and none of them rang true. They were all fakes.

Crumple->toss->trash can.

Like most of my high-achieving fellow students, I had spent most of my senior year sloughing off. English, newspaper, band, French, history. Driver's Ed: I took all of my favorite subjects (well not French, but I liked the idea of French.)

I prided myself on the fact that I did not do any studying or homework at all my senior year. I could finish any assignment in between classes or during lunch. Not one book home all year! And I still made mostly A's. I was definitely not challenged.

I also saw classmates who expected to sail through college to their dream job to living their dream life, whatever that was. We were all lazy and I was angry.

I was to give the speech before a panel of teachers the next day and time was running out. I had to work the night before, in the concession stand at Southlake Cinemas. I wrote the following poem during my 30 minute break:

"Ballad of a High School Graduate"

When it's time for Bill to graduate

With Sue and Tom and Ben

You KNOW that he will be a success

But not how or where or when

He broke "13" on his SAT

And got a scholarship to Yale

He was quarterback on the football team

And was voted the best-looking male

He was in every club and sport and group

That he could possibly be

He was strong in leadership in clubs --

He was President of three

Now it's June and Bill takes the time

To be lazy and rest and sleep

It turns out that he likes it so much

That it becomes a habit he'll keep

When college comes along in the fall

And he's on to something new

He's convinced that his past record

Will be able to get him through

Bill becomes a slave to complacency

And life is turned to grey

So then he flunks out of school

And is on the streets by May

And then he realizes that

He is stagnant in the stream of life

And that to sit and let the world go by

Can be as fatal as a knife

He tried again to build his dreams

And reconstruct his plan

After he got on his feet once more

He had turned from child to man

Although Bill IS fictitious

His story still rings true

Don't let yourself be like him

Or it may happen to you

The moral of this story is

That you must start anew

After Graduation or

THE WORLD WILL CATCH UP WITH YOU!

I knew going in, I wouldn't win the competition, but that's what I had to say and I wanted to say it. There was polite, but deafing silence after I read my poem. I'm sure that would have been the case if I'd read it to a crowd of parents at Tara Stadium. Too cynical, too radical. A message no one wanted to hear.

The poem was a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. When I arrived at the University of Georgia that fall, I was unprepared and undisciplined. I did not know how to study.

By that spring, I had been kicked out of the Honors program and got a flat "F" in Honors French and a "D" in Classics.

I still managed to pull up my grades high enough to get into Journalism school, but it was painful. If I'd been more disciplined, I wouldn't have been in that boat to begin with. And I knew I shouldn't have listened to the person who advised me to take "Honors" French when I struggled with it in high school (probably because I didn't study.)

I always mess up when I don't listen to my gut. The gut knows!

I have a Mary Englebreit calendar with this saying: "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a terrible warning." Let me serve as that terrible warning, nieces, nephews and young cousins.

I did make it through college, and actually got on the Dean's List my senior year (I loved the classes--all Journalism!) But I almost washed out.

Like the Bill in my poem, I had to grow up.

I'm just glad it wasn't too late.

*************

POSTSCRIPT: I know some of my fellow classmates from 1979 and family members are now going back to college, and I admire you so much for that. I could barely hack it in young adulthood, so mortar board hats off to you for doing it "at our age." Well done!

DOUBLE POSTSCRIPT or THE E! HOLLYWOOD TRUE STORY: I thought I'd lost this poem shortly after I wrote it. Even though it was totally inappropriate for the graduation ceremony, my English teacher loved it. (She was on the judging panel and I think she probably fought for me to win.) A newspaper photographer came by to take a picture of some graduates for some reason, and the teacher gave him what I thought was the only copy of the poem and suggested "The Clayton News Daily" run it. They never did. But there was one hand-written copy and I discovered it when I was cleaning out a storage unit I'd kept for nearly five years. I still haven't found my High School diploma though. Maybe that was just a dream....