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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 97 11:41:00 PDT
From:
To:
Subject: Kurt Vonnegut MIT '97 Graduation Speech
(Read the stuff at the end, this speech is NOT by Vonnegut!)
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be
it.
The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists,
whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my
own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will
not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded.
But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and
recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you
and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is
as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble
gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never
crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 pm on some
idle
Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people
who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead,
sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only
with
yourself. Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you
succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your
life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they
wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting
40-year-olds I
know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when
they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the
funky
chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't
congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your
choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or
of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll
ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for
good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and
the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you
should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle,
because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew
you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians
will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll
fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians
were
noble, and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust
fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when
either
one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will
look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who
supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of
fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the
ugly parts
and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Kurt Vonnegut, 6/97
Date: Thu, 07 Aug 97
From:
To:
Subject: FW: Sorry, Not Vonnegut
Well, I loved it, but sad to say, it's not Vonnegut!
hate to burst the bubble, but here goes:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Mary Schmich
Vonnegut? Schmich? Who can tell in cyberspace?
Web-posted: Saturday, August 2, 1997
I am Kurt Vonnegut.
Oh, Kurt Vonnegut may appear to be a brilliant revered male novelist. I
may
appear to be a mediocre and virtually unknown female newspaper columnist.
We may appear to have nothing in common but unruly hair.
But out in the lawless swamp of cyberspace, Mr. Vonnegut and I are one.
Out
there, where any snake can masquerade as king, both of us are the author
of
a graduation speech that began with the immortal words, "Wear sunscreen."
I was alerted to my bond with Mr. Vonnegut Friday morning by several
callers and e-mail correspondents who reported that the sunscreen speech
was rocketing through the cyberswamp, from L.A. to New York to Scotland,
in
a vast e-mail chain letter.
friends had e-mailed it to friends, who e-mailed it to more friends, all
of
whom were told it was the commencement address given to the graduating
class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The speaker was
allegedly Kurt Vonnegut.
Imagine Mr. Vonnegut's surprise. He was not, and never has been, MIT's
commencement speaker. Imagine my surprise. I recall composing that little
speech one Friday afternoon while high on coffee and M&M's. It appeared
in
this space on June 1. It included such deep thoughts as "Sing," "Floss,"
and "Don't mess too much with your hair." It was not art.
But out in the cyberswamp, truth is whatever you say it is, and my simple
thoughts on floss and sunscreen were being passed around as Kurt
Vonnegut's
eternal wisdom.
Poor man. He didn't deserve to have his reputation sullied in this way.
So
I called a Los Angles book reviewer, with whom I'd never spoken, hoping
he
could help me find Mr. Vonnegut.
"You mean that thing about sunscreen?" he said when I explained the
situation. "I got that. It was brilliant. He didn't write that?"
He didn't know how to find Mr. Vonnegut. I tried MIT.
"You wrote that?" said Lisa Damtoft in the news office. She said MIT had
received many calls and e-mails on this year's "sunscreen" commencement
speech. But not everyone was sure: Who had been the speaker?
The speaker on June 6 was Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United
Nations, who did not, as Mr. Vonnegut and I did in our speech, urge his
graduates to "dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living
room." He didn't mention sunscreen.
As I continued my quest for Mr. Vonnegut -- his publisher had taken the
afternoon off, his agent didn't answer -->reports of his "sunscreen"
speech
kept pouring in.
A friend called from Michigan. He'd read my column several weeks ago.
friday morning he received it again -- in an e-mail from his boss. This
time it was not an ordinary column by an ordinary columnist. Now it was
literature by Kurt Vonnegut.
Fortunately, not everyone who read the speech believed it was Mr.
Vonnegut's.
"The voice wasn't quite his," sniffed one doubting contributor to a
Vonnegut chat group on the Internet. "It was slightly off -- a little too
jokey, a little too cute . . . a little too `Seinfeld.' "
Hoping to find the source of this prank, I traced one e-mail backward
from
its last recipient, Hank De Zutter, a professor at Malcolm X College in
Chicago. He received it from a relative in New York, who received it from
a
film producer in New York, who received it from a TV producer in Denver,
who received it from his sister, who received it. . . .
I realized the pursuit of culprit zero would be endless. I gave up.
I did, however, finally track down Mr. Vonnegut. He picked up his own
phone. He'd heard about the sunscreen speech from his lawyer, from
friends,
from a women's magazine that wanted to reprint it until he denied he
wrote
it.
"It was very witty, but it wasn't my wittiness," he generously said.
Reams could be written on the lessons in this episode. Space confines me
to
two.
One: I should put Kurt Vonnegut's name on my column. It would be like
sticking a Calvin Klein label on a pair of K-Mart jeans.
Two: Cyberspace, in Mr. Vonnegut's word, is "spooky."
E-mail Mary Schmich at mschmich@tribune.com
1997 Chicago Tribune