Hello and good evening. I really wanted to start this speech with a hilarious and heartwarming anecdote about some time when our whole class was together doing something; you know, that one moment that we can all remember. The moment that really defined the last thirteen years of our lives. I seriously spent about three hours contemplating, looking back at old yearbooks, class photos, all that stuff my mom saved that I didn't think I'd want to look at until I'm forty and trying to explain to my kids about how great school was for me. Everyone knows the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Alright, maybe it wasn't three hours, but I did try to remember that perfect moment, and the truth is, although you all may be remembering some event right now, I couldn't come up with one. I tried and tried, but never could remember something I and everyone else played some part in. I mean, I went all the way back to the last day of kindergarten, you guys remember? When we all had to dress up as one of the letter people? I think I may have had D for Donut Man, or at least that was the one I really wanted but didn't get, but remember it as that anyway. Well, I wasn't there that day, I stayed home because I didn't have a costume and I greatly preferred my house to the school.
I guess I should move this along before I get all caught up in some sob story about how I missed out on so many chances to forge lasting memories of class unity. The truth is, I feel as though I brought it on myself. Looking back on all those years of elementary, middle, and even early high school, I realize that I never tried to make new friends, never tried to be involved in things with my classmates. I had this strict social ladder in my mind, this incredibly complicated tier system, arranged like some flow chart you would see at a CIA meeting. This little social map, as much as I denied it then, was what I lived my life by. In my mind, there were cliques of people, and I didn't talk to people in other cliques. If I remember exactly, it was something like I refused to be friendly to people who were more than one tier above me or below me. Whatever the exact figure was, I adhered to it very strictly.
Well, now when I think about my views on social groups, I realize I might have been completely insane. I mean, I'm fairly confident that had I mapped this out to a psychologist or something, I would have either immediately been thrown into a 10-step program to normality, or maybe given a bachelor's degree in child psychology on the spot. Whatever the case may have been, and I have a sneaky suspicion that the first case may have been the most likely, but I can dream can't I? Whatever the case, I have realized in these last two years that there is nothing I regret more than the way I acted for the first eleven years of school.
But, maybe I am being a little self-centered, I mean, this is a speech for the whole class, right? I guess I think we all had some version of this map in our heads, as much as we hate to admit it. And maybe you abolished this belief system long ago, and maybe some of you still adhere to it, but either way you have to admit that this does in some way apply to all of us. And this leads me to the point I really wanted to make with this whole speech.
We are all starting anew. We are all being handed a blank ticket for the rest of our lives. These last thirteen years have been the warm-up, now the game is going to start. And after watching all our old practice footage, let me give everyone this advice. Don't ever impose limits on who you think you can be friends with. For that matter, don't ever impose any limits on yourself, because these limits are always ones that shouldn't exist, yet they are the hardest ones to break. It took me almost twelve years to realize that there is no reason I shouldn't be friends with every single person here. It doesn't matter if you transferred to our school last week or you have been here since the first day of kindergarten, I should be your friend. And if I am, good. And if I'm not, I apologize, I'm the one to blame. But from this moment, whether you guys like it or not, I am going to consider you all my friends.
And now, before I finish this speech, I have to apologize once more. It occurs to me now that I could have summed this whole thing up into one or two sentences. I think they would have gone something like this: 'Hi everybody, I just wanted to say that as I stand here, I see two-hundred and twenty-six people who have incredibly bright futures and I just wanted to tell you guys that I think all of you are my friends. Because when everyone's really rich and famous, I'm going to want to think that I was your friend in high school. It's the only thing that's going to impress my kids. Thanks.'
But they probably wouldn't have let me come up here and just say that, so I stand by my speech. Thanks everyone for the great memories, and now if you'll excuse me, I'd better go try and salvage my image.
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