Here are three words to guide the Class of 2018: Mind your head

It’s time for the Class of 2018 graduation speech parody – on the 40th anniversary of my high school graduation.

So, don’t expect much:

Today as you embark upon the journey that will take you over the horizon to undiscovered dreams, I have just three words to guide you:

Mind your head.

I did not know I needed to mind my head, until I turned 40 and took a trip to Scotland, and saw a sign on a low overhead beam that said: “Mind your head.”

Here we would say “Watch Your Head,” but a Brit or a Scot or whatever would say that’s impossible, because you can’t see your head, without a mirror.

Despite all the warnings I saw overseas, I forgot to mind my head, in the years to come.

Once while hosting a party at my house, I ran low on ice, so I raced to a quickie mart, bought two bags, rushed back home, opened the overhead freezer, bent over to smack one bag against the kitchen floor to break up the ice, and stood up fast.

Then I smacked my head against the open freezer door, threw the ice in, grabbed a dishcloth and rushed from the room before someone saw blood pouring down my face and screamed.

Mind your head.

A few years later, my wife and I owned four golden retrievers, in two generations, and three started tussling over a ball by our kitchen bar, which is topped with a marble slab that sticks out.

Because one dog had an injury, I couldn’t let them fight over a toy, so I bent over to snatch the ball off the floor, raised up fast, and slammed my head against the marble.

Mind your head.

The funny thing about that was the elder retriever smelled blood, came over to the sink where I was washing off, and gave me this really worried look, like, “Whoa! Dude! Are you OK? Do I need to run like Lassie down to Fire Station 1 to get help?”

If you don’t mind your head, you learn the world is a hard place.

It’s so hard now that people shoot each other over nothing, and shoot themselves over everything. It’s so hard that some students won’t graduate this year because they were slain in some pointless act of violence. It’s so hard that empathy, sympathy and compassion are no longer virtues.

How you treat others can have a jarring impact on what kind of world yours will be.

So, when you’re dealing with other people, mind your head: Try not to make the world any harder than it is. Be kind to one another. Be courteous with strangers. Let little things go. Don’t rise to anger over every real or imagined slight, and don’t go out of your way to slight others.

Fighting over nothing is a waste of time, and you soon will have no time to waste. You will be working all the time, electronically connected via wireless device to your job or school.

While you are walking around staring down at a screen, mind your head.

Else you may run into things. I ran into things before we had wireless devices to look at. Once I was looking at a woman walking beside me, and she saw that I was about to walk into a light pole. But she did not warn me, because she thought it would be funny to watch.

And it was, apparently, because she laughed, and so did I.

You never know what you’re going to run into, so remember to cherish such moments in your life, just as you cherish this one, because one day they will seem long ago, and far away.

Call them to mind, when times are hard, and don’t bang your head against the wall.

This story was originally published May 25, 2018 at 4:51 PM with the headline "Here are three words to guide the Class of 2018: Mind your head."