Humor by John Christmann
A Time To Remember
I don’t remember graduating from high school.
I am pretty sure I did, given that a high school diploma was a prerequisite for just about everything of consequence that followed in my life. But then graduating from kindergarten was also a prerequisite for the stair-wise climb through high school.
And I don’t remember graduating from kindergarten either.
I don’t have a diploma anywhere that I know of. I don’t have any transcripts. I don’t even have any graduation photographs. So did I really graduate?
I am sure I stood light headed on a podium in the hot June sun with a cloth covered pizza box on my head blowing away an annoying tassel from my face. I am sure I wore the slightly faded robes of graduates past and solemnly walked to a lectern when my name was called to shake the hand of the principal who I can’t remember. I am sure I received some sort of officious certificate recognizing my achievement.
I am sure I posed for some Kodak moments looking like Harry Potter long before there was a Harry Potter. But in a time before computers and digital networks, photographs and paper records had a nasty habit of becoming faded and lost in boxes.
Now all that is left are memories. And apparently, at least where my high school graduation ceremony is concerned, I don’t have any of those.
It is safe to say I wasn’t the valedictorian of the class. I think I would have remembered that. I would have remembered giving a speech about going forth to meet the challenges of the world from the rarified perspective of a seventeen-year-old kid from the suburbs of Chicago who had discovered Old Milwaukee beer, girls, and the thrill of well-tempered wrong-doing during the rigors of his senior year.
I am sure it would have been an inspiring talk.
I don’t remember being voted Most Likely to Succeed either. If I was, my classmates got it wrong.
But there are things that I do remember.
Like getting caught skipping school on a brilliant sunny day in late spring to go swimming in Lake Michigan. I remember the water was still cold. But swimming was not really the point; ditching school was. And I was already accepted into the University.
What were they going to do, fail me?
Actually my school saved that very real possibility for a final English exam. I remember that too. I didn’t study. The test was really hard and the teacher had unrealistic expectations. Like I was actually supposed to read the book or something.
I assume I passed the test, but given the fact that I can’t remember graduating from high school, maybe I didn’t. I do remember that the test was a written examination of the metaphors present in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.
I still haven’t read it.
Shortly after that exam, my parents gave me luggage for a graduation present. Despite my test results, the concept of a metaphor was not lost on me.
But as some high school valedictorian probably once said, one man’s departure is another man’s adventure. And being an optimist I chose to view my set of canvas duffle bags as a pragmatic ticket to an exciting future away from home with an open invitation to return with dirty laundry.
Not a bad graduation gift. Even if that is not quite what my parents had intended.
By the time the graduation robes were dry cleaned, folded, and placed back into storage off the high school boiler room for the next year’s class, I was already enjoying my summer status as a liberated teenager who was officially too cool for high school.
That summer after graduation I hung with my buddies and drove to the Dairy Queen at night in my parent’s convertible with the wind in my hair and the radio on in warm night air that smelled of endless possibility. It never occurred to me that I would only see some of those friends again in brief ten-year reunion increments, and each time would have trouble recognizing them.
But that summer was a two-month window when I could relish both the future and the past without living in either. I was, after all, a high school graduate.
That is what I remember.
My older son graduates from high school next week. Unlike for me, his digital shadow will incorporate his entire school career, complete with transcripts and test scores and locker combinations and attendance records and overdue library fees and photos that didn’t make the year book. It will follow him forever.
In the fall he is off to college. For graduation I am giving him carry on laundry bags and a gift certificate to our local Dairy Queen.
He is a lot better with metaphors than I am.
And if nothing else, I want him to remember that as he matriculates from one event in his life to another, he is always welcome home.
© 2014 Dadinthebox.com