Bruce the Blog
By Bruce Apar
When Bruce The Blog Listens, People Talk
Boy Genius + Internet Illionaire Coogle Gallahan
News Item: Boy Genius + Internet Illionaire Coogle Gallahan became the first 11-year-old commencement speaker in the Milky Way when he addressed graduates of YouTube Youniversity. Master Callahan’s remarks were live-streamed in a private feed from his bunk bed directly to the device of choice watched by graduates, families and Hackers Anonymous! (HA!). Following are highlights of the historic happening…
“Graduates, Parents, Relatives, Other Viewers, Honorable Voyeurs… As I lay before you today, milk and cookies bedside, I am reminded of the immortal word of that great non-American, Justin Bieber, may he rest a piece: “Believe”… what I am about to say.
“For, truly, what choice have you? My generation is the future, and yours, whatever your inappropriate age, is either the present or (spoiler alert: here comes the shade) is clip-clopping like a tired nag into the sadly setting sun. Oh, you still have some skin in the game, to be sure, but it is rapidly being dappled to death by liver spots. C’est la mort.
“At this trending time of transition, I want to talk mostly to ‘rents and analogous caregivers out there. Why focus on them? Well, unlike the content of those messy math and eww-y! English tests we’ve been not taking, that’s one easy question to answer.
“Graduates have the world and the rest of their young lives at their dewy feet. Parents, on the other actuarial table, are a ticking time bomb, with alarmingly few years left to straighten themselves out and right the ship of prostate.
“You know, dear, soon-to-be-departed old folks, I don’t want to shock you into premature cardiac arrest, but News Flash! We young ‘uns don’t need to be busy every nanosecond of every day.
“”Take a chill pill, why doncha?
“If fast-fading memory serves, you may recall — from your irrevocably misspent youth — that we have something you used to giddily cherish yourself: imagination. I can hear your creaky necks right now as you nod in a fog of nostalgia.
“Listen up, please. We don’t — I repeat, we do not — need every move we make, every step we take, to be painstakingly mapped in advance like GPS. Get a grip. Our wanderlust is not lost, even if your common sense is.
“And a word to you adults desperately trying to recapture your glory days — if you ever had any — on the playing field: When we are out there having a great time in the great outdoors, why do the veins in some of your wrinkly necks start popping like we were misbehaving?
“It’s called play. Let us figure it out. Leave us be. Just sit there and learn something about good sportsmanship by watching us try hard and make mistakes. That’s life.
“We’re having fun, learning to be better, settling scores productively, while you’re going batty on the sidelines getting bent out of shape. For what? Grow up. Wake up. Stop pressing the snooze button on civility. I can’t stress enough that your stress can make a mess out of an otherwise beautiful day in the sun for us footloose and carefree kids.
“Now, I’m not saying we don’t get stressed some other times, like maybe when we take a test. That’s why they call it a test, duh! You know what I say? I say yes to the stress! Am I crazy? Like a fox.
“I’d rather know sooner than later about stress, so I can cope with it better later in life. Getting stressed about serious health issues I get. Test stress? Give it a rest. After all, who’s taking the test, you or us? Leave us be, at least every once in a while.
“We may be your dependents now, but your single most important job as a caregiver is to help us become independent. If you fail that test — yes, with all the stress it invariably brings — we are the ones on whom your secular sins of helicoptering will be visited.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but some of you aging adults act like you could have used, along with potty training, a tad more stress training when you were my tender age, ‘cause you don’t seem to handle it too well these many years later.
“Well, precious Parents, you’ve taken enough of my precious time. Let me leave you with this prepubescent thought, inspired by a rhetorical relic passed down from the Ancients: ‘Follow the Money.’
“To that, I say: O.M.G.! Cash.Is.Crass.
“Give yourself some credit and take this advice. It’s free for the next 30 years, with no down payment and no usurious interest:
‘Follow the Future.’
“How?
“Tag, I’m it!”
Media and marketing specialist Bruce Apar, also known by his nom de blog Bruce The Blog, owns and operates APAR All-Media, a Hudson Valley agency for advertising, content, marketing and public relations. Follow APAR All-Media’s Hudson Valley WXYZ on Facebook and Twitter. Reach him at bapar@me.com.
BRUCE THE BLOG 