Rules to live by:

1 – 100: See No. 101.

101: If you must go to a high school graduation, don’t let anybody know the smarts police have sucked your brains out through your nose.

It’s a guideline that’s rarely followed.

Take for example the recent graduation ceremony at Monticello High School way out yonder in New York state. I was fortunate enough to cover the event for the area’s newspaper.

It was my seventh graduation that muggy June weekend. I had stopped getting goose bumps after graduation No. 1 when Principal Fill-in-the-Blank gave his standard motivational speech.

“Look forward to the future, but don’t forget the past because without the future there is no past, and without the past the future cannot be,” the principal would say. “Take what you’ve learned and get a job, start a family, go to school . . . Or just keep giving me the bird, little Billy Packer. I never liked you, booger head!”

Sometimes they’d lose it. How I lived for those moments.

But those cherished times when Janitor Jim would have to restrain Principal Fill-in-the-Blank rarely came. Alas, I was doomed to the curses of monotony — and stupidity.

Perhaps the only aspect of high school graduations that’s more predictable than the principal is the parents. And the laws of the universe say parents must invest time and money into embarrassing their children on high school graduation day.

What possible justification is there for holding signs that contrast a graduate’s naked baby picture with his or her senior photo?

Or how about shooting off that squirty string stuff when one of 400 billion graduates walk across the stage to receive his or her diploma?

Few people know. That’s the beauty of high school graduations.

Monticello was one of my favorites, complete with air horns, boisterous pot-bellied dads and moms who just loved seeing their babies get diplomas.

“Yo Ricky! How you doin’ buddy? We made it! Oink! Oink! (It’s a blow horn thing),” one dad screeched as his son (I think his name is Ricky) led the class of 1996 onto the modified baseball field.

This I never understood either. Why do family members, most often fathers, have to say hello to their children when they’re marching with a group?

Are they not going to see them in just an hour or so?

Did Ricky’s dad think the boy, clearly embarrassed by his father’s attention-grabbing behavior, would somehow be offended if he didn’t tell Ricky first-hand that he had made it to the ceremony?

Call me crazy and dress me in a robe and mortarboard, but I made the apparently incredible leap of faith at my high school graduation and just assumed my parents were in the crowd. I guess Ricky’s dad had other ideas.

To each his own.

But the father didn’t stop there. When Ricky was called up onto the stage, Dad again stood up, tooted his air horn and said: “Yo Ricky! Way to go buddy! You made it!”

Again, I fail to comprehend. I assumed the, “You made it” comment meant Ricky had completed enough high school courses to graduate from the esteemed institution.

But by virtue of Ricky being handed a diploma, isn’t it obvious that he had indeed, “Made it?”

To the lay person, i.e: not a parent, it may seem that way. But Principal Fill-in-the Blank informed me later that day that there is a moron light in all parents’ brains that goes on when their children are being recognized in front of a large group of people.

This explained a lot of things.

It explained why Ricky’s dad had no remorse about making those around him think he had been deprived of human contact since birth.

It explained why I never told my parents when I was going to be visible in the public eye.

It explained why Principal Fill-in-the-Blank’s speech was so dry: Parents could always be counted on to liven the mood.

It explained why high school graduates can never wait to ditch their own receptions and get to those non-alcoholic post-graduation get-togethers.

And it helped explain why I never want to cover a high school graduation again, at least until Ricky Jr. sends his own off-spring out to the marches of Pomp and Circumstance.

Chris Miller is a senior in journalism mass communication from Marshalltown. He is the editor in chief of the Daily.