I have sat through enough of these in my day to consider myself qualified to tackle the subject. Graduating from grammar school was not considered a big deal when I did it. There was no ceremony, just a handing out of final report cards and perhaps a pat on the back from a favorite teacher. All just part of the drill. But when it came time for my grandson to graduate from high school, fifty years later, things had changed. There were all the suburban child-centered cultural tokens — robes and parties and special dresses and mortarboards with tassels and lists of medals and cups and prizes to be awarded (The Federstein Left-Handed Penmanship Prize, the prize for the Most Progress in Table Manners as a Senior, the DJ Twister Prize for Break Dancing — everybody got a prize for something — it’s a sin to overlook an opportunity to beef up your child’s self esteem). There were live performances by those members of the class whose career ambitions involved the entertainment world, which after an hour seemed to include just about everybody. (Talent was not that much in evidence. Ambition sufficed. My grandson whacked away at his drum set, and he proved to be an exception. He definitely had the beat. As he got warmed up there were shouts of “Go, Will, Go!” from his temporarily awakened classmates.)

And of course the bestowal of college degrees is the really big deal — with a “name” speaker to inspire the newly fledged masters of the universe. The properly prominent and robed speakers, slashes of school colors peeking out from the folds concealing their McDonalds addictions, having themselves just received their honorary degrees, dispensed advice in pontifical cadences, usually presenting themselves as examples of hard-won success gained by their own extraordinary diligence.

During these oratorical orgies I amuse myself by pretending that I have been the chosen Commencement Day Speaker, instead of the eminent gentleman (It was always a gentleman.) at the podium. At the bestowal of my own modest BA, I didn’t actually listen at all; the PA system proving inadequate in the brisk breeze at the outdoor conclave. I just watched the traditional passing of the rolled-up diploma-batons and watched for where the extra loud applause was coming from so I could spot the proud parents and friends.

But recently, at my grandson’s college graduation, I let my mind wander. Could I do better? What if I were really asked to give the big speech? No danger, of course. I have done nothing to warrant being selected for the role — I stopped giving money to my alumni fund when I discovered that the president of my college had a bigger salary than the president of my country (Eight times as much, would you believe, plus a mansion, for a cushy job heading up an Ivy League University?), and I have done nothing in my professional life to give me either audience-drawing or donor-drawing power. What would I find to say?

*

“Hello, graduates. I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, ‘This old fart is like all the other old farts at campuses around the country who revel in their moment in the spotlight, and he will say what they all will say. I will just sneak this earbud in and find something in my playlist that will drown him out.’

“Well, perhaps this is one old fart who will surprise you. At least I will try.

“I am now in my tenth decade. At twenty there is no way you can imagine what that feels like. I have already lived longer than any of my forebears. I didn’t expect this. It was not part of my life plan.

“I am financially independent. I mention that first because it came as such a surprise to me. After starting with a T-shirt and an army discharge certificate and neither job nor bank account I have ended up comfortably retired. I didn’t expect that. No one in my family had ever before been even comfortably well off. They all worked till they dropped, worried about whether to pay the doctor bill or the rent.

“I am in reasonably good health. I walk without a cane, I can still (with the help of glasses) read the six-point type of the obituaries in the Times, I can hold my own in one-on-one conversations provided I can see your face well enough to read your lips, and I can still think straight (at least I think I can think straight). I didn’t expect that either at 95.

“The main message here is that things don’t turn out the way you expected. So most of the time you have spent planning on what you will do in the future — near or distant — is wasted.

“Lady Luck will be a huge factor in your life whether you like it or not. Cases in point:

• My grandson who spent endless hours on the Schuykill River to qualify for a spot on the Olympic Rowing Team, was knocked off his bicycle by a careless motorist one afternoon on his way to practice, and had to abandon his ambition and find another one — all in the space of a few minutes.

• My brother-in-law who retired and sold his house in New Jersey and moved with his wife to Florida where they planned a calm retirement, had their plan derailed when his wife developed dementia and he developed glaucoma and they would up in a hospice and an assisted care facility respectively.

• My temporary gig as manuscript typist turned into regular employment as a typesetter which turned into the proprietorship of a keyboarding service which turned into a book composition house which turned into a scientific journal production company, none of which had any relation to any subject I studied in four years of college or three in the army, and for which I had no formal training whatsoever.

• My best friend at college spent hours and hours practicing at the music room piano (while I listened and did my homework and grew to appreciate both Beethoven and Rachmaninoff). He did it to please his mother, who envisioned a shining Carnegie Hall career for him. Meanwhile his pocket-money job as a stringer for newspapers covering local sports developed into a byline and eventually into full-time employment, several sports books and induction into the Basketball Writers Hall of Fame.

“These are random samples from my own experience. There exists a journal called The Journal of Unintended Consequences, an issue of which should appear on every library shelf that holds Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. His book assumed that what you had to do was work out a plan, follow his recipes for good behavior, and reap the rewards. (It worked beautifully for him, of course — eleven titles, all on the same subject, fifteen million copies.) But he was the exception; not the rule.

“So as you new graduates go forth from this place, with your ambitions and your strategies, remember that as Bobby Burns told us ‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.’ Allow for surprises. Life, like history, is just one damn thing after another.

*

“Hey! Wake up! Take those wires out of your ears! This old fart is giving you valuable advice. What do you think this is — a joke?”