Before graduating, they told us to take our gowns on a hanger and, more specifically, they told us to make sure it wasn’t a hanger we wanted back. I wondered of the great hanger conspiracy, figuring the whole graduation ceremony was nothing more than a ploy for the faculty to score hangers for themselves. You gotta save a buck or two here and there. But nevertheless, I did what was told of me; I found the dullest looking, ripped-off-from-a-dry-cleaning-store coat hanger in my closest, hung up the gown I had already refused to iron, and took off in my golf cart—suit and tie, seat belt for a belt, plastic shoes.
I had hung the gown up on the right side roll bar of the golf cart, where it promptly flew out of the side. Luckily my childhood wasted on video games gave me reflexes quick enough to grab the gown before flying into the grease puddles along the side of the road and I was able to prevent such nicknames as The Roadkill Graduate. I stopped the cart, flung the gown into the trunk, and continued the journey, making mental notes of the things I had to do. I had to pick up Chris, I had to meet in the classroom, I had to graduate, I had to go to grad night, I had to wish all those people I would never see again a fond farewell. 4 out of 5 is 80%. That’s a B, which stands for Above Average. It doesn’t feel like Above Average, though.
So I graduated in a flurry of corny jokes, snide remarks, and visual antics, not to mention the sarcastic self-aggrandizing remarks about the other students parents actually coming to see me. The choir performed Seasons of Love to my muttering "This is so Saved by the Bell." That one even made one of the teachers laugh. Slapping my chem physics teacher in the back of the head as I walked up to receive my diploma even received a chuckle from one of the vice-principals, a lady whom I refer affectionately to as "Hitleretta." Until then, I didn’t even know she was capable of laughter.
As my name was called, I could hear people yelling, "Go Stingray!" and could imagine others wondering, "That kid was a Senior?" or musing, "Thank God he graduated." I leaned into the super intendant and said, "Thanks for the memories, pal" as my picture was being taken. Truth be told, I still don’t know exactly what I meant by that. Thanks for the memories? I can’t even fathom how he had anything to do with my memories. And "pal"? I never even knew the guy.
And as I left the stage, I took a small, solipsistic bow, thinking to myself the same thing I yelled as I walked on campus to register for Senior year: "Yep. I own this school." Of course, it isn’t true and only helps to bench press my ego and blur the line between fiction and reality, but that didn’t stop me from thinking it. Or yelling it.
And the graduation ended with the students throwing their caps into the air. I was a little late on the throw owning to the bobby pins the teacher or "Team Leader" had installed into my hair to give me that "cap is about to fall off" look I had been yearning for. And, upon cap retreaval, I ended up grabbing some cap that couldn’t have been mine, but very well might have been filled with headlice. Then I proceeded to shake random people’s hands before finding my family and doing that smug little picture thing, my dad with his digital cameras and disc space wondering if he had enough memory left. After my parents left, I wandered around looking for someone who might care and I realized all too forlornly that those people were few and far between.
And then grad night happened, which I can descibe in a number of ways, not the least of which will be on a sexual level—bare with me. Grad night can be described as a party for the hip kids to show off how many friends they have managed to keep, despite their steaming egos and general shallowness—yes, in case you were wondering, I include myself here not because I’m a hip kid, but because of the ego and the shallowness part.
Grad night was girls who would never have sex with me trying to show off, without intereaction, that they would, and have, had sex with a lot of other people.
Grad night was guys who wanted to make sure everyone knew they had found and consumed a bottle of steroids recently.
Grad night was hanging out with the hip kids, pretending I was a hip kid, for just one night, while the hip kids knew I was faking. Some were okay with my faking, others might have been a little disturbed. I figured that I used to be friends with these people so I might as well pretend like we had never drifted apart.
Grad night was trying to suck the fun out of 4 years of time trials, self-discovery, and over the top bullshit.
Grad night was seeing those casual friends for the last time before they go to some unheard of university just to escape parental control while I waste another year or two in this godforsaken hellhole known as The Valley of the Sun.
Grad night was seperating the hip kids into cool and uncool. Cool were those who genuinely cared about the people around them. Uncool were those who cared about the people around them only as an audience, who wore skimpy clothes in a false attempt to be seen as a sexual icon. I hope one day I’ll get past these antics and see these self-objectifyers for the people they’ve recently rejected.
Grad night was making fun of the hypnotist and the people that were interested in him—taking a blonde joke and substituting the the word "hypnotist" in for "blonde."
Grad night was pulling Greg Louganises on the big puffy slide or using taco bell jargon to describe the varying degrees of difficulty of the mechanical bull.
But most importantly, grad night was a farewell to the dreams and memories that began when I entered the high school for the first time and ended as the sun came up this morning, talking about the "in" crowd with the one of the few hip kids who actually cared. My life is comprised of these memories, these relationships, and it will remain that way forever. Some of the students will remain in my life for years to come and some will exit suddenly and without warning. Others will have shifts in attitude and still others have already been seen for the last time. There wasn’t the kodak moments of a fond farewell I had anticipated and I left grad night the way I had left high school, with a sigh of truce. And I wish someone would have told me not to get too attached to some people. I wish someone would have told me that those people were like the coat hanger for my gown. I picked the worst coat hanger for a reason—I didn’t want to give up something that I cared about so much so quickly. And I didn’t want those people to leave my life so soon, without even understanding who I was and without my understanding of who they were. But I still have college, a place where paths may soon cross again, and lives may be yet enriched, because hope for the future is all anyone can ever have; the only reason anyone continues so avidly. Reality is reality, though, and many people have already been etched in the stones of my past as a fleeting moment of regret, a mistake worth its weight it gold. Thanks for the memories, pals.