I've put off writing this speech for a long time now. I thought it would be easy and I could do it in just a few hours. Five hours later, I found myself staring at a blank screen. I thought maybe all I needed was some inspiration. So I decided to go visit the school one more time. I turned on a computer in the library and five hours after-that, I found myself staring at another blank screen. So I thought maybe my friends could help. I called up Pat Conway and asked him to come help me. Now I'd get something done, I thought. It ended up with two guys staring at a blank screen. Once they kicked us out of the library after school was out, we decided to look for some inspirational quotes to help us out. We found some great quotes but I really can't stand up here and talk to you for five minutes about animal genitalia. I decided I would let Pat use that one for his closing.

So what should I talk about? I mean, how can I sum up all of high school in a short speech? I could regale you with stories and precious memories of our class but I know that Katie and Liz will be using the sappy speech approach for both of their speeches and frankly, I'm sick of crying. So if I don't talk about the sappy stuff, what possibly else is there to talk about? I could talk about the torture and misery of high school but this is supposed to be a happy occasion and I don't want to be responsible for ruining that.

So that leaves out pretty much all of my high school memories and I end up with nothing so far for a speech except for one really long introduction and a good closing statement that you will find out soon enough. I decided, well, since all the memories are covered, why not look into the future? Tons of room to work with there and the best part is that nobody can really tell you if you're wrong because it hasn't happened yet. I know what some of you are thinking and trust me, I'm not talking about making any kind of prophecies like at prom. We've all seen where those have ended up. I already said that I didn't want to be responsible for ruining the day.

I didn't want to take up too much time because I know there are a lot of celebrations going on after this. Not only is each of us individually going to have a graduation party after this, I'm also fairly certain that all the teachers and staff have champagne waiting somewhere for them just as soon as we step out of this school with our diplomas.

So have we gotten anywhere in this speech yet? No'? Alright, perfect! i would like to remind everyone listening that it's not easy to write a speech. So where was I again? That's right, the future! While researching quotes, we noticed that Dave Carnegie once said, "Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday." I'm still not sure about what that means. I'll probably figure it out sometime next week. Maybe I can even use it in college. Wait a minute! College is in the future! I think I might actually be getting somewhere with this.

That's right, as hard as it might be to believe, we have fifteen seniors graduating today and all fifteen of us are actually going to have a college education. We will meet many new people. We will experience many new things. We can only pray that we have been prepared enough to handle them. We will learn. We will graduate again. And then I'll be forced to write another speech that goes absolutely nowhere.

Then we will go on and start our careers and hopefully families. We will live our lives and have our children and probably understand what our parents meant when they told us not to stick things up our noses. With any luck, all of us will end up having lives that we can be proud of. And in the end, we will end all end up meeting again in 25 years at our high school reunion. And you guessed it, those who decide to show up will more than likely force me to write yet another speech that goes absolutely nowhere.

So now that I've wasted a good ten minutes of your time, I better stop talking before anyone falls asleep. I would like to leave you with this one piece of advice that was given to me by Pat Conway: When you die and arrive at the pearly gates and you see St. Peter ... make sure your planner is signed.

Thank you.