CARLTON FLETCHER: A dose of reality for the graduates

And your mementos will turn to dust, but that’s the price you pay. For every year’s a souvenir that slowly fades away.

— Billy Joel

I know, I know. You’re 17 or 18 now and you know everything there is to know. You can’t wait to throw off the shackles of being forced to go to school for 12 (or 13 or 14 or 15 …) years and be free.

But except for a very small percentage of you high school graduates — that being the nerds who have been planning their careers since they were 2 years old or the ones whose families are rich enough to set them up for life — your “freedom” comes with a price that may startle you. As graduates, you are now kind of bound by society to start making your own way in the world.

Your mother has been wonderful, taking care of you your whole life, picking up after you, fixing your meals, cutting the crust off your bread. And dad has financed your momentary excursions into the musical world — that new guitar you HAD TO HAVE that you learned two chords on and stood up in the corner — the $972 prom extravaganza, complete with limo, for your “date” with that girl who only agreed to go with you to make her ex-boyfriend mad and ended up with him at the dance, Napoleon Dynamite-esque, leaving you to take prom pix with your best friends who went solo.

Now, though, unless you have parents who get your failure to launch, they’re ready for you to empty the nest, to start earning your own way. They’ve put off vacations, a house remodel, buying new cars, romantic weekends for the past several years in favor of your wants, neeeeeds and desires.

Now they’re ready to go back to having a life of their own.

Oh, they’re going to love you, they’re going to be there to lend a hand when your first big business idea falls flat, and they’ll probably bail you out of jail a couple of times when a wild party that broke out around you — “I wasn’t doing anything; I was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said every kid who’s ever had to call his or her parents from the police station. They’ll even give you support when the first real love of your life turns out to be the first real love of several people’s lives — all at once.

But the time has come for you to decide what you’re going to do with your life. Maybe you’ve always planned to be a mogul making billion-dollar deals. Or you’re going to be the best chef who’s ever put on an apron, adored by mobs of foodies and sought after for TV endorsements. Or maybe you’re going to be the next videogaming superstar who makes millions of dollars playing games and talking to people who actually spend their free time watching other people play games.

As the Brits or Australians or some of those people who talk funny say, “Good on ya.”

But each of you needs to realize that when you grab that diploma, shake school officials’ hands and listen to your family cheer for you in that one huge moment, those cheers are a signal that the 99.3 percent of you who don’t have your life mapped out, day-by-day, have begun the very real — and very frightening — journey into adulthood. And there’s no turning back.

Note to family members who will take hundreds of thousands of pix of your graduate on his or her big day: We want you to share this big moment in your graduate’s life with us and our readers. If you’re taking photos of the big day — and who isn’t — use this simple process to share your photos on the AlbanyHerald.com website:

1. Visit http://www.wetransfer.com

2. Click “Take Me to Free”

3. Put our email ([email protected]) in the “Email To” field

4. Put your email in the “Your Email” field

5. In the “Message” field, please include your name (for photographer credit), the event you attended and a brief description of the event so we can tell everyone about your photos

6 Click the + (plus) key to “Add your files.” (You can select multiple photos from your computer. On a PC, click the file first and then press and hold the Ctrl. key. While holding down the Ctrl. key, click each of the other files you want to share. On a Mac, use the “Command” key and follow the same steps.)

7. Hit the “Transfer” button and you’re done.

Oh, and congratulations, graduates. It’s really not all that bad out there. Remember this one word for the graduates: “Plastics” … wait, aren’t they banning those now? Never mind. Just live off your parents until they kick you out. And remember, couch surfing is not as fun as it sounds.

Staff Photo