Dear High School Graduating Seniors,

Yes, you....the bright, promising baby-adults who are putting on those long coveted, overpriced cardboard caps and crepe paper gowns this spring.  You're going to get lots of towels, gift cards and $20 bills, along with Hallmark greetings that wish you success, fruition of your dreams, and congratulations for a job well done.  And it won't really mean a whole lot at the moment. (Except for the $20 bills.  Those mean a lot, any time.)  One of those cards will be from my family, and I haven't decided on the $20 or towels, but I DO know what my wish for you is.

I hope you suffer a little in college and/or those first few years out on your own.  

Not big hurts or devastating setbacks or anything like that, but just enough discomfort to give you good stories to tell later in life.  

I hope you eat a lot of ramen noodles.  Nothing makes you appreciate good food like running out of food points on your card in the middle of the semester and having to rely on the 10-for-$2 specials on ramen noodles.  

I hope you get a roommate or co-worker that drives you a little nuts with their weird breathing or obsession with Luke Bryan or wet towels on your bed.  It sort of makes you look at your family in a different light.  All of a sudden, that really annoying brother or mother that you couldn't wait to get away from seems downright charming.  

I hope you get a really crummy job for a while....it might be work study, it might be your first job since you didn't go to college, but I hope it's something like shoveling beer cans for a recycling center in the summer or re-shelving scientific periodicals in the school library.  Every hour will seem like three.  And you'll spend every miserable minute planning a life that's better...and it WILL be, because this is such a motivating time in your life.  Don't ever forget it.  

I hope you live in the old dorm or the old apartment that is drafty, has odd plumbing issues and where everyone who lives there knows (and fights for) the one good spot on the sproing-y couch.  You might spend one whole night on that couch with snow shovels and a (root) beer, waiting to kill the poisoned mice that stagger out of the laundry room.  You'll have AWESOME stories, and what's more, the day you get into a newer, nicer apartment will be the day you hug a refrigerator and gloat at the richness of the joint.  

I hope you're lonely once in a while.  Not the despairing "no one likes me and I want to die" lonely, but the "Gosh, it's just me and...well,...myself.  NOW what?!" kind of lonely.  It will give you time to think of a new way to prepare ramen noodles (with or without store brand ketchup) and to call home without having to act all cool and grown up.  Or take a shower to wash the stale beer smell off from your miserable (but temporary) job.  Or reset the mousetraps.  

And I hope in twenty years or so, you'll be telling whipper-snapper high school graduates that they need to suffer a little to have great stories like yours, that they'll learn more about accomplishment in adult life by having a little discomfort right at the get-go.  

Congratulations!  You rock!  

Sincerely, 

The Farmer's Wife