For the most part, my graduation day was fairly uneventful. I honestly don't remember a thing that I did that day except figure out what to wear, put the graduation cap and gown on and take pictures with my grandmothers and my Aunt Pand and Uncle Rid (which all came out fuzzy, because I was the only person in the family who knew how to focus a camera).
I should add that this would be the first time I had ever graduated from anything. I had been to many ceremonies, but I had never participated in one. My brother Loyd got to graduate from kindergarten. I didn't because I went to Head Start. There was nothing cermonial about that accomplishment. There was also no graduation from Park Junior High School. We just had the academic awards ceremony, took a 90 minute lunch and goofed off in class for the rest of the day.
(Later in life, when I filled out job applications, some of the forms would ask where I went to high school and junior high school. Then, they would ask if I graduated from them. I would always mark "yes" for high school and "no" for junior high. I had always hoped that someone was going to ask me how I graduated from high school without graduating from junior high. I would have told them, "We didn't graduate from junior high. We just went to the high school." But no one ever asked. I was disappointed.)
It was a normal graduation. It was just exactly as I had seen about a dozen other times. I don't remember anything anybody said up on stage. We had no special guest speakers. (I should point out that I was not selected by the faculty to be one of the student speakers. My stupid work schedule kept me from coming up with a better speech for the audition.)
The only thing of note that happened was that almost everybody pre-maturely threw their hats in the air. We still had to do the closing prayer. The student selected to give the prayer had to deal with a lot of yelling and screaming as he was trying to get everyone to pipe down so he could officially close the class of 1982. This was even though we had rehearsed the ceremony two days earlier.
I went to one of the student parties at someone's house that night. There were plenty of teens getting served alcohol, and it wasn't just limited to the graduates. It was really my last chance to connect with my fellow classmates. All I experienced was as much distance from the other students as I had for the last three years. Of course, part of this may be due to the fact that I didn't drink any alcohol.
I had to leave the party early because I had to go to work at 6am the next day at the racquet club. I also got roped into joining other members of the choir to talk and perform for the students at my Dad's school. The focus was on members of the choir who had attended Hermosa. Dad didn't tell me about it until that morning, and I really didn't want to do it. He told me I had to, so I got there and was shocked to see that the other students had prepared musical numbers to perform. I really felt out of place for the second time in 12 hours.
It's funny how I don't recall anything that happened that day before I graduated high school, but remember the nonsense I had to do the day after.
So that closes the chapter on a really sucky senior year. However, I found I would have another one of those four years later. It was bad, but not as bad as high school.
And a note about this blog: I will be taking a little bit of a vacation for the next couple of weeks. This seems like as good a place to pause as any as I recharge my writing batteries. After I get myself into college, this blog's format is going to make a radical change. I hope you check back in for it.
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