School's out forever

A couple of days ago I had the displeasure of attending a high school graduation ceremony. The graduate was Whitney's brother Drew, who seemed to hate the whole idea of it more than anyone who was just going to watch. The three-hour event was held in the Greek Theater, a building which ignores thousands of years' worth of masonry expertise and is built as a hard stone bowl in which the audience is slowly broiled by the sunlight.

After the students had all come in wearing the red and yellow gowns that made them look like lost Gospel singers, or possibly a very large fruit salad, the first half of this ceremonious psychological torture was taken up by various performers and speakers talking about very little. Having said that, all the student speakers completely eclipsed the principal of the school, who talked in a droning monotone and paused to take a breath between every three words or so. Someone sang. That was all right. Someone rapped. I didn't listen. The rest of the audience gave up on what was happening on stage fairly quickly, and instead cheered on the students who were batting around smuggled beach balls before the teachers came over to confiscate them and rob the event of any interest it may have once had.

Finally the performances ended, the audience woke from its slumber, and the escapees filed up to the stage while the orchestra started their endless loop of Pomp and Circumstance. About forty thousand names were read out as they walked through a huge stone arch decorated with balloons, received their blank diploma cases (kept empty so that they could drag them back to the school one more time and deny their graduation if they upset the ceremony), then walked off, danced a bit, or in one case, fell over. Meanwhile, I drew things on my programme. By now the members of the orchestra looked ready to pass out one by one, but the list of names ended before it became a solo performance. The final notes played and everyone ran off as fast as possible.

No one enjoys going to the graduations, but I think I have an extra dislike of them because the event held when I left the Academy three years ago (even referring to getting out of school as a "graduation" seems over the top to me) consisted only of about sixty of us going up to an assembled stage - we didn't even use the real one at the other end of the hall - shaking hands with someone or other, and getting our black folders. Shake with the right, take with the left - that obviously took a full week of practice beforehand. Some went up multiple times to get certificates from the Orchestra, Young Enterprise (I got that one even though I wasn't part of it), and so on. No Greek Theater or collapsing orchestra for us, just running laps of an assembly hall.

There was a reasonably good meal afterwards, though.