Urban legend had it that this originally was a speech given by Kurt Vonnegut during a commencement address at MIT. It was actually written by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich.
Her original article:
Sunday, June 1, 1997
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.
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 blindside you at 4 p.m. 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 will 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.
© Copyright Mary Schmich
Her reaction to the snafu:
Sunday, August 3, 1997
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. Vonnegut--his publisher had taken the afternoon off, his agent didn't answer--reports 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 again--in 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 off--a 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."
Yet another chapter in the saga:
Friday, August 8, 1997
Many people seem to think I know, or should, since, to my bemusement, I've been cast as both critic and performer in the cybermystery of the week.
"The NBC Nightly News" sent a camera crew to check it out. "Nightline" sent a car. I have been called by more book publishers and newspapers than I thought existed in this era of the TV and the World Wide Web.
My editors--I swear--asked me to write this column exploring the cyber issues of the story. They were as sympathetic as concrete when I whined that I was too busy exploring the issues on the nightly news and "Nightline," though they seemed happy to know why, for a change, I'd combed my hair.
If you are smart enough to have spent the past week at the pool instead of at the TV or computer screen, you may need a recap:
Two months ago I wrote a column composed of advice to graduates. It opened with the timeless wisdom: "Wear sunscreen."
Somehow, sometime, somewhere out in cyberspace, that column morphed into an MIT graduation speech by the novelist Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Vonnegut did not speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and had never heard of me or my speech until it began shooting through the Internet's murky labyrinth as a vast e-mail chain letter.
It went to Italy and France, to Israel and Brazil, to places I didn't know had electricity. Even Mr. Vonnegut's wife, the photographer Jill Krementz, received it, e-mailed it to several friends, then asked her husband: Why didn't you tell me you spoke at MIT? His reply: Because I didn't.
One interviewer suggested it was the most widely distributed piece of e-mail in the history of the Internet. Is it? Who knows? Who knows anything for sure on the Internet?
But people have been asking me to tell them this and more about the Internet, which is a little like asking the dancing bear to pontificate on the circus.
Still, I've tried to answer questions such as these:
Do you think cyberspace is scary?
Sure. Anything by anyone, with any name attached, can be launched into cyberspace and within hours may be read by multitudes around the globe. My brief life as Kurt Vonnegut in the end harmed no one, but it illustrates the reach and potency and pitfalls of the Internet.
The written word always has been powerful. But compound the power of the word with the power of the Web, and you have a force beyond what we've known before. That's terrifying, captivating and beautiful, like the mushroom cloud of a bomb.
Why do you think people are so fascinated by this story?
Partly because it's scary, and we like being scared. Most of us can't comprehend cyberspace. Many of us can barely turn on the computer. And out in that mysterious frontier there lurks this mystery: Who first stripped the real name off my column and added a phony one? Why Kurt Vonnegut instead of Danielle Steel?
What was it like talking to Kurt Vonnegut?
He was very kind.
Do you hate the Internet now?
The Internet is like a certain kind of person--cheats you one minute, charms you the next. Without the Internet I would never have heard from the 900 or so people who've written their thoughts on the commencement speech that was never spoken. The responses have been eloquent, generous, passionate and funny and I hope one day to answer them all.
What is the weirdest e-mail you've received?
Several have suggested there is no Mary Schmich. One claimed Mary Schmich is a character in Kurt Vonnegut's new novel. Another claimed Mary Schmich is just another cyberhoax.
How do you pronounce Schmich?
That's better left a mystery.
What SPF sunscreen should I use?
Consult your dermatologist. My specialty is cyberspace.
© Copyright Mary Schmich