I’d like to start out by asking everyone to turn to the person seated to your left and your right and say to that person, “When I see you again.”

“When I see you again.”

It may seem improbable that a person can garner a Ph.D. from Yale University without ever graduating from the eighth grade—but in fact it is true and you are looking at one such person right now. I never graduated from the eighth grade.

Sure, I got my diploma, passed all my classes and was an honors student, but I never graduated from eighth grade.

Little did Ms. Saint-Louis and Principal Fralin know when they extended the invitation for me to speak today that this would be my first eighth grade graduation—and had my parents been in town today I might have asked to borrow a robe so that I could march in the procession with this year’s class.

No, I never graduated from the eighth grade. I never sat where you were right now basking in the adulation of my middle school teachers and parents.

When it came time for me to attend graduation I had long grown weary of hearing my parents agonize over money that I decided not to bring forth another cost for them to incur. In my mind we would all benefit if I saved them the cost of the cap & gown, and the yearbook that came with my graduation packet. When June arrived and my parents realized that they had not received any notices about graduation, I told them, I simply told them I decided not to attend. When my teachers intervened, I dug in deeper and held fast to my decision. When my friends said I was being “stupid” and “selfish,” I simply brushed them off. When my music teacher told me he’d fail me if I didn’t attend and play in the band—I reminded him that his class was an elective. Looking back on it now—better yet—looking out into faces in this crowd I can not believe that I would undermine years of work and effort by so many people for a measly fifty dollars. How could I have been so naïve?

I’ll tell you how: I was fourteen years old. Like some of you in this audience I was fourteen wishing I were seventeen so that I could get my license and a car. I was fourteen wishing I were eighteen so that I would be on my way to college and out of my parent’s house. I was fourteen and saw the wonder and beauty in everything else accept being fourteen.

Man, what I wouldn’t give now for having someone else pay my mortgage, buy my groceries, my clothes and all I would have to in return is go to school for eight hours a day for nine months and have the other three months to myself. Don’t get me wrong life gets better as you get older, the girls get prettier…and some of us boys even start acting our age…but what you have going now, is a pretty good deal.