Heck Of A Guy

I have received this year’s first announcement of an eighth grade graduation ceremony.

Felicitously, I am confident in this case (the announcement references a friend’s child, my last interaction with whom involved me changing his diaper) that no one expects or wishes more from me than a promptly mailed congratulatory card with a check enclosed.

And, for my part, I am happy to play my designated role in this social blackmail pantomime and pay up, having experienced the alternative — the horror that was the Eighth Grade Graduation of my younger son (AKA Mesomorph) only three years ago. Happily I am able to report that, although the flashbacks and sleep problems persist, the tic over my left eye has diminished and is now notable only when I’m under stress.

Mesomorph’s Eighth Grade Graduation was an endurance contest – in the same sense that The Bataan Death March was an endurance contest. The graduates were to arrive at school an hour before kickoff, which meant, given that few eighth graders have convinced the State of Illinois to grant them drivers licenses, even on the eve of their graduation, that parents had to rush from work to deliver the offspring to the school an hour before the ceremony.

The awkward one hour gap between dropping off their students and the onset of the ceremony meant that 700 or so parents spent the dinner hour sitting on bleachers in the fetid environs of a middle school gymnasium squinting at 60 minutes of ostensibly candid slides of student life, a photographic series tied together aesthetically by the theme of Out Of Focus Images Of Almost Identifiable Kids Posing For Candid Shots.

The slide presentation was accompanied by a recorded music program, Random Snippets Of Almost Recognizable Top 40 Elevator Muzak Tunes, played over a speaker system which compensated for its lack of clarity and fidelity with immense amplitude.

After this warm-up, we were treated to 1¾ hours of self-congratulatory pronouncements and awards. One of the assistant principals explained, in detail, the variations in criteria of the Honor Roll and the High Honor Roll before awarding special plaques to those 37 students qualifying for the latter distinction. Much was made of the fact that most of those 37 had GPAs of greater than 4.0 in a grading system that featured 4.0 as a perfect score; I dunno – to my hillbilly way of thinking, if someone has a score of 4.02, then 4.0 isn’t a perfect score. And, if 37 kids (more than 10% of those graduating) have scores over 4.0, then 4.0 is just another arbitrary point on the upper end of the grading scale.

But I digress – which is fitting since digression was another primary motif of the evening.

We also sat through the bestowing of roses and yet more plaques, this time to the PTO mothers who organized the 8th Grade Dance. We were also directed to applaud those teachers and school administrators who had heroically managed to make an appearance at the ceremony.

Worse, the parents were then instructed to “give [ourselves] a round of applause.” Now, I believe with all my heart and soul that I deserve a standing ovation by the assemblage of all currently living humans on this planet just for living this long in proximity with Da Boyz with all three of us surviving and that any incidental parenting I provided along the way should be rewarded with hard cash or precious metals along with parades and statues, but being enjoined, along with a few hundred other parents, to applaud myself by a middle school principal does not replenish my store of intrapsychic resources, enhance my self-esteem, or suffuse me with a sense of gratification. I, in fact, feel lucky that I didn’t, as an automatically oppositional reaction to the principal’s assignment, begin booing myself, an action that could have resulted in umbrage on my part against me and could have even led to a nasty outbreak of violence between me and me.

Next, awards were bestowed for perfect attendance. I’m all for awarding accomplishments and, consequently, I think awarding perfect attendance is dandy, but if and only if accumulating a perfect attendance record means overcoming a challenge –- say, if the student has to traverse a series of ice floes en route to class or if a 6′ 9″ power forward with Michael Jordan moves not only returns for his eighth grade year instead of turning pro but also attends class every day; otherwise, this is surely the wussiest prize imaginable. In effect, the school is awarding a kid for the good luck of staying healthy, having no scheduling conflicts, and being born to conscientious parents. I would also point out that perfect attendance doesn’t necessarily pass what I like to call the comatose patient criteria, which simply asks, Is the task something that my comatose patient could do? and, If so, is completing that task really a plaque-worthy accomplishment? I do not recall the hospital administrator or a representative of nursing pinning an award on my comatose patient for showing up in his hospital room every day.

Six students gave speeches listing the school activities of the preceding year: football, baseball, chess club, Science Olympiad, volleyball, debate, and many, many, many more, including Recycling Club. Names of participants, won-loss records (the wrestling team, by the way, was 3-6 for the year), awards earned (5th place in the state Science Olympiad), and every other wrenching detail were obsessively recounted. Each of these activities, however, did possess common traits – each was “great,” “wonderful,” and, most of all, the basis for “memories which will last a lifetime.” Yep, when these kids are 62 years old, they’ll be quaffing a few beers and reminiscing about the glory days of Recycling Club.

My recollection starts to get fuzzy at this point. I do recall that the 7th Grade Chorus sang two numbers, we pledged our allegiance and sang the national anthem (I’m pretty sure it was the national anthem of the USA), and I have the distinct memory of several phonebooks being read aloud in their entirety for our edification. A special Perseverance Award was announced, but to my amazement it was not bestowed upon me for sitting through this marathon but was given to students who apparently suffered from having a parent who was a teacher, administrator, or worked in some other role in the same school building.

The actual distribution of the diplomas was an afterthought, accomplished in minutes #105-112, after which the mercy rule was invoked, and we were allowed to flee the scene.

I memorialized the moment my son received his 8th grade diploma – as interpreted through the medium of the head of the obliviously ascendant audience member directly in front of me: