AN UNDERACHIEVER REFLECTS ON LESSONS OF LIFE

Twenty years ago this week, my high school graduated me. So exhaustive were the standards of underachievement I established, a full third of the faculty wept.

The morning of my graduation, the senior class gathered under dreary skies on a football field where long rows of seats were lined up and, as a final lesson after a dozen years of schooling, we were instructed how, when and at what pace to walk.

Since we in the Class of 1974 knew about everything in the world on this day when cockiness is excusable, most of the seniors endured this exercise in various stages of boredom, conversation or horseplay.

Besides, it was really up to just two classmates, with the misfortune to be named Adams and Ahlvin, to march the seniors to their appointed places. As one of the "N" seniors, I merely had to follow the person in front of me, which I managed in rehearsal without flaw.

As the day wore on and the overcast did too, administrators and commencement planners grew edgy about the weather and in mid-afternoon decided to shift the ceremony to the school field house.

Custodians hauled the chairs less than a block and reassembled them on a basketball court. There were the same number of seats in the same number of rows; some in my class went on to be doctors and dentists and lawyers and professors, but on this night, when critical thinking could have gotten us through a minor site adjustment, the educators hedged their bets and decided a rote lesson would be more appropriate.

An hour before the ceremony was to begin, the sky cleared as if some heavenly Windex had been applied, and a late afternoon sun turned the field house into a sauna. As the Class of 1974 sweated out the overwritten speeches under black robes on the field house floor, we looked up to the bleachers where proud parents and relatives sat, and the distinguishing view was that of programs being waved back and forth to stir whatever thick air was available.

Still, it came off without a hitch. No one tripped climbing to the stage to get their diploma, no one failed to execute the obligatory tassel-switch. As seniors, our shining moment was indeed a shining moment.

This nostalgia swells in me because my oldest son graduates from high school tonight. Twenty years ago, I was not bright enough to understand pride. Today, I am proud and knowledgeable in that feeling.

Unlike his father, Daniel proved himself a good student, self-possessed, a hard worker and a nice kid. He earned scholarships that will pay for a good bit of his college education ... sparing his parents the humiliation of my mother, whose pleadings to a university registrar for my admission took a while to bear fruit.

All that being the case, I stand hard-pressed on this graduation day to present him with any words of wisdom. I might be self-conscious of the effort since it presumes a fundamental understanding of life on my part. I might also recognize that regardless of what hard-won lessons I pass along to him, he will have his own to learn. I can't protect him from the difficulties life will offer him, but in a sense I never could.

Despite all the schooling I managed, I learned not a whit about being a parent except by being one. I wonder now if my father did as I have done, put his head in his hands at some frustrating moment and ask, "Am I doing this right?" He must have, but I never saw it. What I saw was assurance, never bewildered introspection.

Maybe I was doing it wrong. Fortunately, I married a good parent.

If I venture any advice to Daniel on this day, it is that things that are important to him today may be trivial even five years from now, and that the most devastating moment of a given time can turn out to be the best, the most rewarding moment turn in your lifetime.

I would tell him that there are people who will look him squarely in the face and lie, and then be unjustly rewarded for their deceit. And I would tell him that most people he will run across are the decent sort, the kind you can build a life around.

I would tell him that wisdom comes ironically with the recognition that there are plenty of things you don't know. And I would tell him that the things all the cliches say are most important -- health, family, love -- turn out to be just that.

I would tell him to laugh as often as he can and dream big, because neither costs anything and neither hurts you.

What I've discovered in my 20 years out of high school is that life is a lot like the day of my graduation, full of regiment and confusion and nervous energy, but it all comes out all right. I wish my son luck with his own discoveries.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.