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From: Hans Havermann <[e-mail]>
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Subject: Wanna Good Aphorism? <LONG>
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Sometimes a meme just needs a good handle to get it going. In the case of
Mary Schmich's June 1 column in the Chicago Tribune, that handle was an
attribution to author Kurt Vonnegut. Mary's article which began with...

<Begin Intro>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted On The Young

Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some
world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd
rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our
words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason
we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.

I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<End Intro>

...ended thus:

<Begin Conclusion>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ladies and gentlemen of the Class of 97...

Wear sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas
the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering
experience. I will dispense this advice now.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not
understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But
trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in
a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how
fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as
effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The
real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your
worried mind, the kind that blind side you at 4 pm on some idle Tuesday.

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who
are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're
behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in
doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The
most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do
with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still
don't.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're
gone.

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you
won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on
your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself
too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are
everybody else's.

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what
other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be
nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people
most likely to stick with you in the future.

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should
hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because
the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were
young.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in
Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will
philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that
when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and
children respected their elders.

Respect your elders.

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe
you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run
out.

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it'll look 85.

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.
Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past
from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and
recycling it for more than it's worth.

But trust me on the sunscreen.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<End Conclusion>

Somewhere, someone replaced Mary's Intro with:

KURT VONNEGUT'S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS AT MIT.

The meme was now primed. On July 30, it hit Usenet. When I encountered it
on a local BBS a few days later, I tried to source it and discovered it had
already been (somewhat) debunked. Apparently, the actual speaker at the
June 6 MIT commencement was Kofi Annan (secretary general of the United
Nations)! I was still trying to get an actual newspaper name and date from
a couple of early Usenet posters who indicated (in my mind) that they had
knowledge that was possibly more primary. My only response was encouraging:

>The quote I gave was one from a newspaper article about Vonnegut making
>a speech at his alma mater, Cornell. The full text is:
>
>"The advice I give myself at age of 71 is the best advice I could have
>given myself in 1940 when detraining for the first time at Cornell."

I checked out Cornell's Web site but couldn't find more than a handful of
Vonnegut references, all unrelated. Neverthess, I went from
(Vonnegut-believer to) Vonnegut-disbeliever right back to Vonnegut-believer
again. Alas, yesterday my not-too-skeptical bubble burst: Mary Schmich
wrote a followup article in the Chicago Tribune...

<Begin Article>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VONNEGUT? SCHMICH? WHO CAN TELL IN CYBERSPACE?

I am Kurt Vonnegut.

Oh, Kurt Vonnegut may appear to be a brilliant, revered male novelist. I
may appear to be a mediocre and virtually unknown female newspaper
columnist. We may appear to have nothing in common but unruly hair.

But out in the lawless swamp of cyberspace, Mr. Vonnegut and I are one. Out
there, where any snake can masquerade as king, both of us are the author of
a graduation speech that began with the immortal words, "Wear sunscreen."

I was alerted to my bond with Mr. Vonnegut Friday morning by several
callers and e-mail correspondents who reported that the sunscreen speech
was rocketing through the cyberswamp, from L.A. to New York to Scotland, in
a vast e-mail chain letter.

Friends had e-mailed it to friends, who e-mailed it to more friends, all of
whom were told it was the commencement address given to the graduating
class at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The speaker was
allegedly Kurt Vonnegut.

Imagine Mr. Vonnegut's surprise. He was not, and never has been, MIT's
commencement speaker.

Imagine my surprise. I recall composing that little speech one Friday
afternoon while high on coffee and M&M's. It appeared in this space on June
1. It included such deep thoughts as "Sing," "Floss," and "Don't mess too
much with your hair." It was not art.

But out in the cyberswamp, truth is whatever you say it is, and my simple
thoughts on floss and sunscreen were being passed around as Kurt Vonnegut's
eternal wisdom.

Poor man. He didn't deserve to have his reputation sullied in this way.

So I called a Los Angeles book reviewer, with whom I'd never spoken, hoping
he could help me find Mr. Vonnegut.

"You mean that thing about sunscreen?" he said when I explained the
situation. "I got that. It was brilliant. He didn't write that?"

He didn't know how to find Mr. Vonnegut. I tried MIT.

"You wrote that?" said Lisa Damtoft in the news office. She said MIT had
received many calls and e-mails on this year's "sunscreen" commencement
speech. But not everyone was sure: Who had been the speaker?

The speaker on June 6 was Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United
Nations, who did not, as Mr. Vonnegut and I did in our speech, urge his
graduates to "dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living
room." He didn't mention sunscreen.

As I continued my quest for Mr. Vonneguthis publisher had taken the
afternoon off, his agent didn't answerreports of his "sunscreen" speech
kept pouring in.

A friend called from Michigan. He'd read my column several weeks ago.
Friday morning he received it againin an e-mail from his boss. This time it
was not an ordinary column by an ordinary columnist. Now it was literature
by Kurt Vonnegut.

Fortunately, not everyone who read the speech believed it was Mr. Vonnegut's.

"The voice wasn't quite his," sniffed one doubting contributor to a
Vonnegut chat group on the Internet. "It was slightly offa little too
jokey, a little too cute... a little too 'Seinfeld.' "

Hoping to find the source of this prank, I traced one e-mail backward from
its last recipient, Hank De Zutter, a professor at Malcolm X College in
Chicago. He received it from a relative in New York, who received it from a
film producer in New York, who received it from a TV producer in Denver,
who received it from his sister, who received it...

I realized the pursuit of culprit zero would be endless. I gave up.

I did, however, finally track down Mr. Vonnegut. He picked up his own
phone. He'd heard about the sunscreen speech from his lawyer, from friends,
from a women's magazine that wanted to reprint it until he denied he wrote
it.

"It was very witty, but it wasn't my wittiness," he generously said.

Reams could be written on the lessons in this episode. Space confines me to
two.

One: I should put Kurt Vonnegut's name on my column. It would be like
sticking a Calvin Klein label on a pair of Kmart jeans.

Two: Cyberspace, in Mr. Vonnegut's word, is "spooky."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<End Article>

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