the big day. Its tomorrow.
I promised myself I wouldn’t cry unless extremely necessary…then my friend Oscar started crying during baccalaureate. Thanks a lot. I always cry when other people cry.
But, what I’ve been wanting to say is that two instances have suprised me about my high school graduating class- along with human nature.
The first is a tradition that all the seniors take part in. Once upon a time in a land in which wall-ball was an active sport, the high school (or our city, I don’t know which and doesn’t really matter) built a wall to practice one’s tennis skills upon. Now this wall sits next to ancient remains of a tennis court, but they turned the wall into a mural with the football schedule painted new on it every year.
On the back of the wall is a whole bunch of graffitti, but, if you observe closely, changes every year. Yeah, thats right, each year the senior class paints over last year’s grafitti and ghettos it up again with next year doing the same.
Now we just repainted the sucker white again the night before, when a couple of guys came back in the morning and spray painted really crude things about a couple of gay guys (my friends, incidentally) in my class. We hear about it and plan to go repaint it again whenever we get out of mandatory graduation rehearsal.
We get over there with rollers and buckets in tow, and notice that its totally blank again with a couple guys and a mom out there painting.
These boys I’d never imagine to be doing something like this, but when I asked what was the deal, the mom told me “Oh well, so-and-so already painted over it, by himself before we got here. We were just finishing it up.” This kid, while knowing my two gay friends, isn’t in the popular crowd, isn’t Valedictorian, draws and smokes cigarettes most of the time.
Doesn’t that just kind of speak to you?
My second thought on human nature is that of baccalauriate, the not-manditory-but-highly-encouraged church service for graduates at which, our seniors from choir sang at. So, needless to say, I wasn’t sitting next to my best friend.
The scriptures were good, the sermon was a little too First Christian for my taste (you can tell these things if you compare Church of Christ and the former) but the final prayer, I thought was going to be something extremely lame, but turned out not to be.
The man, older, greyer and more wiry than his youth ministerial counterparts, asks a simple request: “Think of someone who has changed you and whispers their name aloud.”
I immediately thought that extremely loud people were going to yell or that I was being manipulated because I could see where this was going. But nothing of the sort happened, even though the vague manipulative feeling didn’t go away totally. I was more or less mouthed my persons name, feeling slightly foolish.
“Now think of people you are thankful for and name them.”
I did.
“Name one regret you have.”
I swallowed hard and listed several.
“Name one hope you have for the future.”
I tried not to think about this one too hard, for fear of losing it.
“Now just think of the people you never want to let go of.”
I lose it.
Not like full out sobbing, but enough to be noticeable. The girl next to me, someone I’ve never been close to a day in my life due to different social circles grabs my hand and holds on tight to it. I- oh gosh, I’m starting to tear up again. My left hand soon has a warm squeeze of another hand as well.
I’m not one to cry during Hallmark commercials, but today I’ve experienced more of what high school should be than I ever have. This has been the two days of the past four years of my life. No, I’m not joking or being sarcastic. I’m usually very cynical about all this gushy stuff, but for the first time, I realize that I maybe, just maybe, miss these people.
Tomorrow the is the end of one chapter, but the start of a whole new book series.
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