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Ah, the day has finally come at last... wow... yay, here I am, graduation day... should I be happy of this or what? Grad practice was Thursday, June 26th. That was fairly interesting, but it was also quite boring. Basically all grad practice consists of is walking and talking. We were timed on how fast we walked into the arena, and told how fast we were supposed to walk in, relatively. Well, during the practices, they played a song, and we finished with about 20 seconds left of the song. Unfortunately, on graduation day, we weren't quite that lucky. At practice, this is where we got our grad gowns, caps with our 6 tickets & tassle, with our safe grad clothes.
So Graduation day finally started. Graduation doesn't commence until 7pm, but I had to be at the school with my friends at 6pm sharp. Not a lot was going on that day really. My parents were getting in fights with my girlfriend over some minor stuff, everyone was getting stressed out, and I just wanted to get the night over with really. They gave me six tickets, but my parents and Alice were 3, plus my grandmother on my mom's side was going, my aunt, and my great-grandmother... making six... the draw-back was, my great-grandfather was told by my father that he was to go to my graduation too, since he'd probably only see one of his grand-children graduate, seeing as he's 80 and the next to graduate is Alex, who's only like 12. My father had said that Alice could give up her seat, but of course, shes going to be surprised by this comment... to make a long story short, my father got mad at her for being shocked about giving up a ticket and everyone was pissed.
When 6 came around, I had to go pick up Brian from his house where his parents were taking plenty of pictures, to take him to the school, where I left the car until later. At the school, we were to get dressed if not already, and be prepared to do the grad photos on the steps. This went by quick, only about 40 minutes! Ugh! It was starting to get very hot now... and then we had to get bussed to the skating arena for our graduation ceremony which we practiced the night before, Thursday. On the night before, we had everything pretty well perfect. They played music, as I mentioned before, it was like a marching song. They had two x's on the floor with duct tape. We walked in as pairs, (see pictures here) in homeroom & alphabetical order, or walking beside someone who was in the same homeroom and close alphabetical last name. When 7pm approached, the graduates walked in from outside. Standing with your pair, we walked in waiting on the first x, with the bleachers to our left, and the open entry doors to the ice, or where it would be, to our right. Instead of ice, this is where the parents & friends who hold tickets now stand (roughly seen in the back of this picture, seen here), as well as of course, the graduating class (see here). When the first group of pairs reached the second x, about 8' ahead of the first, the second pair would commence walking. The third pair would then do the same when the second pair reached the second x, and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, because of pictures and such, the pace of the walking had slowed down from what we had practiced, so when we were to the last homeroom (section 4 of 4), the music had stopped! It was silent except for walking and talking, so people started sitting down, but our guidance counsellor, who was the nights speaker, told them to remain standing. After the graduates had arriven at their spots, they then proceeded with O'Canada, then sitting down.
The ceremony itself, up until the recession at the end, lasted about 2 hours or more. It was beginning to get very hot in that arena. Myself had a tank top, and a japanese button up shirt over top of that underneath my gown, plus of course, a pair of regular pants, so I feel pity for whoever had wore formal outfits.
After the recession, where we were able to take pictures and greet our friends and family, we were then bussed back to the school. At the school, we returned our grad gowns and changed into our Safe Grad clothes. This could be either the clothes we had bought, if preferred, or regular 'civies' or casual clothes. I only had a safe grad shirt to change into. It was a navy t-shirt that says, "Safe Grad 2003", luckily for us, it doesn't say what school we had safe grad from!
When we got changed and brought back our gowns, we were then bussed to Clark's Harbour for 10 pin bowling. This was fun... I didn't want to tell them I wanted shoes, so I went to play in sock feet. I threw my first ball and went tit's up, landing my both of my wrists and my ass. My night pretty much went downhill from there. Bowling lasted a few hours, then we were bussed to the Lions Hall, where there was a DJ playing until 3am. There, I had the grossest sub I had ever ate from Subway, and stuffed my face with chips and pop... about an hour into the dance, Alice finally showed up as a guest, and we finished out the rest of the night, me feeling sick, her feeling sick, her ankle in pain, and my left wrist was throbbing, it was great... when we got down there, we were bussed again, back to the school, where we were to go home. By now its about 3:30 or so, foggy as hell outside. People were walking down to the beach to watch the sun rise at about 5am. So now I have Brian, Soup & Alice in the car with me, and legally I'm not allowed to drive, but oh well, I was anyway. So then we proceeded to Tim Hortons for a brief wake-up call. I bought a large french vanilla cappuccino, which I don't think agreed with me, since I was starting to finally wake-up when everyone else was getting tired. From Tim's, we drove down to the beach to meet up with everyone else that was there. Some people were drinking, some smoking, but mostly just sitting around the fire, waiting for the sun the come up.
5am rolled around and I had to take Soup back to the school, so Alice came with me. At the school, we seen my Global and Law teacher Mrs. Goreham, Devin and a security guard, who was just making sure everyone got home safe and nobody was at the school. The security guard came over to talk to us, so I just told him we were waiting for Soup's parents to get here, as they would be here soon. Soon after, Devin's dad came to get him, now it being close to 5:15am, and Mrs. Goreham came over to the car. She told us that she had just remembered that Soup's mom had already came to the school and that she told her that he was with me, so she went home. So now I had to take Soup home, another 10 minutes wasted, but I had to go back to the beach to pick up Brian! When I got back to the beach though, Brian had already started walking up the road, so I picked him up on the way and headed for home... where I had got there, after dropping off Brian, at about 5:30 or so, and went to bed... or so I hoped. I got about an hour sleep that night, I felt like I was going to puke all night, then I had die-or-e-ahh... safe grad was the best... and I spent the next 24 hours regretting it. I had work that day, from 4-9, and I had to call in sick at 11am. When 4pm came around, I was throwing up... and continued throwing up until about 8 or so. Yeah, Graduation was great... Safe Grad sucked balls. So theres my two days of being away from High School.
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