The Road to Oz, Take Two
The commencement address I delivered in 1992 gets a long overdue glow up.
The signs of graduation season are in full bloom. I’m currently in Michigan at my mom’s house, and on my walks with my dog Gilda, we pass dozens of suburban lawn signs in the neighborhood, congratulating members of the class of 2026. Fancy, personalized signs. Meagan. William. Tyler. Sophia. So maybe it’s no accident that I also just came across a box of artifacts related to my own graduation in my mom’s basement. Things she has absolutely no business still having.
I may or may not have similar time capsules in my own home. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
Among the contents: several copies of The Tower student newspaper from my alma mater, Grosse Pointe South High School. I served as Deputy Editor, but in Vol. 64, No. 30, dated Thursday, May 28, 1992 (thirty-four years ago this month, whoa), I was not the journalist, but rather part of the story. On the front page of this issue, an illustrated biplane trailing a banner reads, “INTO THE MYSTIC,” (why we chose a 1970 Van Morrison song for our 1992 class song, I’ll never remember), and, “SENIORS TAKE FLIGHTS.”
My senior photo is also on the front page. I’m wearing a very… earnest blouse. And pearls. It’s giving major Tracy Flick vibes. You’d definitely hire me as a temp.
I was one of two commencement speakers selected from an audition pool of eight candidates. Fortunately, the other slot went to my dear friend Heather King (who bore absolutely no resemblance, behavioral or otherwise, to any character from Heathers). Our speeches, according to the article, “recall memories of the past and dreams of what the future might hold.”
When asked about my speech, I told the reporter (who was also a classmate and newspaper staff colleague, but let’s make it sound more like Bob Woodward and less like the guy whose locker was next to mine): “It is an analogy to the Wizard of Oz. If I told any more, it would defeat the purpose of the speech.”
I was seventeen and 10 months old, and already committed to the bit.
I’m fairly certain there’s a full, printed copy of my speech sitting in one of my artifact boxes somewhere in my Las Vegas home. I remember coming across it when I was packing to move from Oregon last year. I’m also almost certain there is a VHS tape of the actual ceremony. For those under 40, VHS stands for Video Home System, and a VHS tape is another phrase for what we called videotapes in the 1900s. We would play them on these magic little machines called VCRs, which stood for Video Cassette Recorder. None of these things came with Instagram or Tiktok.
What I do have on hand are slightly fictionalized fragments of the speech and moment, forever memorialized in my first novel, Grosse Pointe Girl: Tales from a Suburban Adolescence, published by Simon & Schuster. Getting published by one of what we now refer to as the “Big 5” was a dream come true, and my early books will always be like dear, lifelong friends. Grosse Pointe Girl is more closely inspired by my own upbringing in a very affluent suburb of Detroit. My second novel, The Girl I Wanted to Be, is not at all ripped from my personal headlines, but inspired by that moment we all have where we stopped seeing things as a kid and clicked into acute awareness of the adult world.
Both books are paperback originals and stand-alone novels published under the adult division of S&S. As both are narrated from a teen POV (which I’ve always loved), I’ve also had a lot of teen readers (which also delights me to no end). Much has changed in my life since these first came out, including the voice and tone of my writing, but when I revisit these books now, I also see some serious foreshadowing of experiences I would later have in my adult life that I never could have known at the time I originally wrote these novels. Pretty incredible, right?
My first book also featured not only a cover but also interior spot illustrations by wonderful artist Christine Norrie, including the infamous commencement speech moment.
Here are some of the related excerpts, featuring the narrator Emma and her will-they-won’t-they best guy friend Billy.
***
By Tuesday, the hallway buzz has turned from prom to graduation, just a week or so away. I’m thankful for the subject change, hoping to avoid shared details of Billy’s prom night. We’ve reinstated our traditional third-period smoke break in his car. This week, the hall monitors don’t even bother asking us for passes when we saunter into class fifteen minutes late.
“Are you ready?” Billy asks me, rolling down the window. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”
I’ve earned the distinction of commencement speaker after auditioning with twelve other students. My speech, “The Road to Oz,” is packed with analogies and lessons: the yellow brick road being the path ahead of us; the quest for a brain, a heart, and courage; ruby-red shoes that gave you the power to control your own destiny the entire time.
I had no idea what I was talking about. The administrators ate it up.
“Sure. I’m going to tell three hundred and fourteen people what to do with their lives.”
***
The night before graduation, Billy Crandall and I drive over to the school grounds around midnight. The front lawn has been set up for the event, and if the weather holds, tomorrow at seven p.m. we will begin our walk across the stage in front of the blue-and-gold banners and accept our diplomas and wonder what comes next.
Billy parks around the corner and we crouch low as we sneak across the lawn to the stage. He takes a seat in the front row while I practice.
“You are headed for a place called Oz,” I say in a politician’s voice.
“When Dorothy began, her intention was to find a way home again. Is that how you feel now? Do you really want to leave the security and comfort of Grosse Pointe South?” I ask a sea of nearly empty folding chairs.
Billy stands up and begins to clap.
“Wait,” I say. “I’m not finished yet.”
***
Reader, I was never finished yet. This has not changed.
What has changed is everything I would actually say.
Distinguished faculty, beloved parents, family, and friends, and fellow members of the Grosse Pointe South High School Class of 1992:
Welcome, and good evening.
I had a whole speech prepared. A real banger with some deeply sincere, frequently clichéd, on-the-nose analogies to the Wizard of Oz. Creative but also largely predictable. Primarily cheerful. Controversy free. Safe.
But I’m setting it aside tonight, because I have some things to tell you that seventeen-year-old me could never have known to say.
Consider this a dispatch from the future. Pay attention.
First things first: put down the cigs and the booze. The Benson & Hedges, the Salem Menthols, the Camel Lights, the Marlboro Lights, and definitely the Marlboro Reds. Also the martinis, the seabreezes, and all our training wheel versions: Boone’s Farm, Sun Country Wine Coolers, Mickeys 40’s. I know: most of our parents always had one in each hand. As did their parents. It’s practically a love language in this zip code. But here’s what nobody is saying out loud in Grosse Pointe, and probably won’t for another decade or two, if ever: none of these things are taking the edge off. They are the edge. We learned very young in this town that you don’t talk about the hard things. You numb them, you mask them, you serve them in a crystal glass at six o’clock and call it unwinding. Some of you will figure out a different way to cope. Do that sooner rather than later.
To the women in this class: you are also allowed to want more than what this town has historically suggested is the appropriate ceiling for your ambitions. You can get married. You can have children. You can be a devoted partner and an incredible mother… and also, you do not have to. You are allowed to want a career, a creative life, a path that looks nothing like the blueprint. You are allowed to want that without apology and without explanation. (And if someone does eventually greenlight The Real Housewives of Grosse Pointe, I want it on record that I called it.) Oh and PS? Your outward appearance, no matter how tight, taut, tucked you fight to keep it? It’s the least interesting thing about you. And anyone who ever suggested otherwise does not deserve another second of your time. And if your own voice in your head has been the loudest in this choir, the time to bid them adieu is right now.
To the men in this class: you are allowed to have feelings. I’m fairly certain no one has ever told you that. What many of you have likely heard and felt in your bones since birth is the weight of expectation. Follow your father into the firm. Become the executive, the lawyer, the doctor. Do it without complaint, without visible struggle, without ever once admitting that this might not be what YOU want. Some of you will carry that weight and quietly suffocate under it. Some of you will realize years from now that tonight was your peak. Not because you weren’t capable of more, but because no one ever gave you permission to find out what more looked like. You are more than what you’re being handed. You are allowed to want something different. You are allowed to need things. That is not a weakness. That is, in fact, your greatest superpower.
And to everyone in this class who has spent the last four years hiding who you actually are because this was not a place, nor was 1992 a time that made it easy or safe to be anything other than what you were told to be… I see you. It gets so much better. The world you’re walking into will change in ways that would astonish you right now, and you will be able to exhale, and be the real you, out loud, in public, without apology. I won’t lie to you and tell you the fight is over. But you will not be alone in that fight, and you will be more loved than you currently believe possible. Hold on.
Now, let’s circle back for a minute on that Oz story. The Scarecrow’s whole crisis was that he thought he didn’t have a brain. And he was so focused on the brain in his head, he forgot that we actually have two: the other one that lives in your gut. The one that’s been trying to tell you things for years. The one that operates on truth rather than fear. Start listening to it.
The Cowardly Lion thought he lacked courage, but what he actually lacked was permission to try and fail. So here’s your permission: make mistakes. Enormous ones. Embarrassing ones. The kind you’ll be telling stories about in thirty years. Failure is not the opposite of success. It’s the actual mechanism of how success happens. The detours are not the problem. The detours are a critical part of the entire story. The detours are where all the growth lives.
The Tin Man was convinced he had no heart. He was wrong. He was the most feeling one of all of them, and it terrified him. So: check on your people. Not the performative check-in, not the how are you said while already walking away. The real one. Some of the people on this lawn tonight will not make the whole journey, and the grief of that does not have an expiration date. Say the things that need saying before you need to say them. Be someone’s Tin Man.
Spoiler alert: the ruby slippers were on your feet the whole time. I’m keeping that part from the original speech. What I failed to mention is that nobody else gets to decide when you click your heels. Not your parents, not your partner, not your job or your title. Stop equating your worth to whether or not someone else chooses you. Choose yourself. Also, the good witch knew about the slippers the entire time, but if she’d told you earlier on, would you have believed her? No. But that was intentional - she knew you had to figure certain things out on your own. So go figure them out.
It’s also okay to not know what comes next. It’s okay to leave this very white, very wealthy, very specific bubble and fall apart a little and put yourself back together differently. Grosse Pointe is a beautiful place to be from in many ways, and it also carries a history of deep dysfunction. One of my favorite phrases is, “Both can be true,” and that is certainly the case here. Be proud of where you’re from. And don’t let it entirely define where you’re going.
Be kind. Give grace. But have boundaries. Reinforce them. Protect them. Maintain them. Kindness without limits is not a virtue, it’s an open door, and not everyone who walks through it deserves to be there.
And finally: if I told you who is president by the time we all turn 50, you would not believe me. And if I could go back and change the course of history in any single way, that would be the one. But I can’t. So instead I’ll just say this: pay attention. Participate. Exercise and protect your rights. Take nothing for granted. And remember this: the man behind the curtain is always, always, smaller than he appears.
Congratulations, Class of 1992.
The road is yours.
I’ll see you out there.
xo,
SG
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