Jimbo Compares Public Education to Woolly Mammoth

"I was tempted to yell something like �sod you� back at them," said Jimbo, "but I courageously continued with my address." Now, three months later, people are still puzzled. "I can�t sleep at night, just thinking about this thing," said B.P.C. the toilet artist.

"It just doesn�t make sense," said J. Wangatorium, one of Jimbo�s colleagues. "Public education isn�t woolly; it doesn�t have any hair at all." J. Wangatorium remarked also that his speech was much better because it was not at all memorable.

Jimbo has explained it by saying he was drunk at the time.

The text of Jimbo's speech:
(This is a genuine Jimbo creation!)

Today, it is finally over. For 12 years now most of us have been undergoing public education, and it ends once and for all today. This day, however, is not just an ending. At risk of sounding trite, it is also a beginning. Numerous millennia ago, massive animals roamed the plains of what is now our nation, wild and free. But they were not alone. No, they were hunted by nomadic tribes of humans. When the males of the human tribes reached a certain age, they would begin to hunt. Their task was the killing of a woolly mammoth or some other such beast. They left on this hunt as boys, but when they finally made the kill, returned as men. So it is with us. After today, you will return home having finally slain the symbolic mammoth, public education. Victory is yours. But what happens now is the good part. Previously, you were the children of the tribe. You were subservient. You were told what to do, living not on your own terms but on the terms of others. Life is different now. Having completed the great hunt that is high school, you are now citizens in your own right. No longer will most major decisions about what you need to know and do be made by someone else. That power is in your hands now. For most of you, the process of education drives onward in the form of college. But this time it is different. You are studying now not because it is what you are to do, as school has been since walking into a first grade classroom began the process 12 long years ago. No, you are studying for yourself now, for your future. Your future is what you make of it, and you are beginning to shape that future by the choices you make in college. Your life belongs to you now. Do with it what you wish. So, on this occasion of graduation, think not only of what is past. Many say that carefree high school days will be remembered as the best days of your lives. Don�t make this true. Granted, high school was probably a lot of fun. Now, however, you have control over your own life, so you can make life whatever you want it to be, and enjoy life more than ever before.