High School Graduations

Drove from Augusta to the Georgia National Fairgrounds just south of Perry, Georgia for yesterday for a high school graduation.  That's a long way to go for a graduation.  Shoot, walking across the street is a long way to go for a high school graduation.  Those things have got to be about the dumbest excuse for a gathering of people that I can think of ... but I probably need to explain that.

It's part of recorded history that yours truly did, in fact, graduate from high school.  I would have no memory of it all (the graduation ceremony or the three years of school) were it not for the odd surviving photograph.  Part of the reason for this, I suppose, is because our family moved during the summer between my junior and senior years.  I attended, and thus graduated from, a school that I had never really wanted to go to, in a still largely unfamiliar region, with people, many of whom I considered friends, I really didn't know very well and would never see again after about a year or so.  High school, that most inconsequential of American institutions, left absolutely no impression on me.  The graduation left even less of a mark.  If it weren't for witnesses' accounts, I would be inclined to swear that it never happened.

But happen it did and every spring it happens about thirty thousand times across the fruited plain.  Talk about tradition!

As a recruiter, I attended six or eight graduations every May in upstate New York.  Not a one of them stands out in memory.  Here in Augusta, my own children and the children of friends have invited me to attend their grad uations.  Not a one of them stands out in memory, except maybe my daughter, Sarah's.  Graduations are boring.  In fact, I believe it's more intellectually stimulating to have your teeth cleaned that to sit through a high school graduation.

From the ridiculous costumes, to ear-shivering renditions of the Star Spangled Banner, to the shallow, sophomoric speeches, to the silly and often obnoxious behavior of family members--and the young "scholars," too, high school graduations are among the most unremarkable, unrewarding, unintelligible events ever organized.  Thank God it's still the case that no admittance fees are charged!

High school graduation speeches are the dullest orations ever dispensed on planet Earth.  If valedictorians could be prevailed upon to skip the vanity of speechifying at their commencements, the illusion of their superior intellect would be forever preserved.

Still, a graduation has its good points.  My favorite part is the playing of Pomp and Circumstance.  Divorced from the occasion, Pomp and Circumstance is a great piece of classical music.  But graduations cheapen it.

If I don't ever have to attend another high school graduation it will be too soon.

Unless, of course, it's for my grandchildren.