George Bernard Shaw once said, “It’s a shame that youth is wasted on the young.” If that is true, then I would also add that it is equally a shame that boredom is wasted on the bored.

Are you ready for a change, I mean a REAL change? The candidates for president of the United States are clearly ready.

So it’s the New Year. The ball has dropped, the parties are all over, your Kool and the Gang album has been tucked away for another year, and Dick Clark has gone back into his jar of formaldehyde. Did you make some New Year’s resolutions? I just bet you did. One great thing about Americans is how plucky we are. Every year, we make various resolutions: to lose weight, contribute more to charities, write more letters, be better neighbors, and watch less television. And every year, let’s face it, we fail miserably.

(Editor’s note: Smoky Mountain News columnist Chris Cox delivered this address to the graduating class at Southwestern Community College this past weekend.)

A couple of days after I was asked to deliver this address, I asked my creative writing students if they had any ideas about what I should say. One of them said, “You should say something funny. Definitely funny.” But then one of them said, pausing for effect, “What if you try to say something funny and no one laughs?”

As you know, the Christmas season these days begins about 20 minutes after the last of the trick or treaters have collected their candy, and lasts until the last college bowl game is over, which used to be on New Year’s Day, but is now closer to Valentine’s Day. In other words, it goes on forever, no doubt driven more by the greed of consumerism than the true spirit of Christmas.

I look at you. You look at me. We’re dancing sort of, but I’m not much of a dancer and neither are you. There is no practical reason why you would want or need to buy cookie dough from my six-year-old daughter, just as there was no practical reason why, just a few years ago, I bought six boxes of Girl Scout cookies from your daughter. If either of us needed or wanted the cookies, we would simply get in our cars, drive to the supermarket, and purchase them. Think of a world in which we would have the things we needed only when six-year-old girls came knocking on our doors to provide them to us. I do not believe that this is a world either of us wants to live in.

I am pretty sure I am going to get lashed for saying this, especially as an English teacher, but I do not really believe there is much that can be done to improve one’s ability to spell words. I haven’t done the research, but it has always seemed to me that good spellers are born, not made, that the ability to spell is as genetic as freckles or male pattern baldness.

I miss all those Sundays at my grandma’s house, so many Sundays, so many years. Once upon a time, it seemed we would never run out of them. It seemed as if there would always be cars lined up like dominos in the driveway, a couple of the trucks pulled up into the yard. It seemed as if the smell of frying chicken would always waft into the living room from the kitchen, drawing the men’s attention momentarily away from the Redskins-Cowboys football game and their talk of work and weather. It seemed as if the women would always be opening doors with their elbows, their arms full of casseroles or pies or three-bean salads.

Let me say this first. This is not really a column about restaurants. The last time I wrote a column about restaurants, I suggested that Pizza Hut bring those poor young ladies holding signs on the curb out of the blazing afternoon sun and let them work inside in air conditioning. Two days after that column appeared, we saw one of those same young ladies holding a sign that read, “Chris Cox, We Love Our Job!”

The central paradox of parenting is that by the time you have it figured out, it’s over. Now that I have written that sentence, I immediately see two flaws in it, regardless of how wise it sounds. First, parenting is never over. Well into my late 30s, my father was still giving me an “allowance” and buying my meals whenever we ate out at restaurants, and my mother still fretted over my lack of sleep. You don’t stop being a parent the day your child turns 18. Second, you never figure it out. Never. You’ll figure out Rubik’s Cube before you have the first clue about parenting. You’ll learn two languages and write a novel first. Learn to play the violin. Run the Boston Marathon. Dance with the stars.