MY LAST GRADUATION (THANK GOD)!

Thank you Lord for endings, and for me there will be no more graduations.  As a retired college professor, I've seen lots of college graduation ceremonies.  I sat on the stage with other faculty members and watched with great anticipation . . . that it would soon end.  Graduation ceremonies for those who aren't there to see a relative graduate can be dismal affairs, and the more of them I attended, the more I hated them.  I only went through one graduation ceremony and that was to receive my M.A.  Found a way to get out of all the others, and there are several diplomas hanging on my office wall.  I attended my daughter's high school graduation, and her college graduation because that was local, right there at hand.  I didn't attend my son's graduations from high school and college in Arizona because they took place a long way off, and I was tied up with coaching duties.  Now, both of my grandkids have graduated from high school, and I attended both ceremonies, and that's the end of it for me.  I've had enough.

Yeah, I know, graduation is a big deal for the graduate.  And it should be, but graduation ceremonies have deteriorated over the years to where they're little more than a circus event.  I went to a college commencement ceremony at a large university about 15 years ago when my step-daughter got her M.A., left with a bad taste in my mouth.  Tacky.  Just a bunch of celebratory bullshit.  No class.  But the high school commencement I attended this past Friday night topped 'em all when it comes to being tacky.  My granddaughter was graduating along with hundreds of other kids from a large high school.  So large, in fact, that they had to have it at the city civic center.  I'm just guessing, but at least twenty thousand people showed up.  I paid ten bucks to park a half mile away from the building, then got a seat so far away from the stage set-up that you couldn't see much, unless you looked at the big video screen.  At the doors coming into the place, searches were conducted of bags and purses to make sure nobody brought in celebratory stuff - air horns, balloons, etc.  And they actually sold soft drinks, popcorn, and stuff like that.  Are you kidding me?  At a high school graduation?

It was a lengthy process, and as always with modern commencements, tacky . . . big time tacky.  Disgustingly tacky and low class.  I saw one man wearing a suit - one.  I wore a white shirt and dress slacks, stood out like a sore thumb among folks dressed like they were headed to a beach party.  But in the midst of all of that bullshit ceremonial stuff, something really nice was taking place.  Lots of happy kids were on display, their show, their time to be center stage.  The old days and old ways are gone now, replaced by a lightweight display of what should be more dramatic, more of a memorable event.  But that's me, and I'm old, and it's not my graduation.  I'm out of it now, won't ever feel compelled to attend another commencement.  Perhaps those two grandkids will graduate from college, but one miserable old man won't be there.  I'm done with graduations, and they'll just have to understand that.