When my sister married, she went from being a Top 13 Alphabetter to a Bottom 13 Alphabetter.
Fourth from the bottom, to be exact, and what did I care?
Until I found myself at a three-hour-long kindergarten graduation ceremony at the neighborhood Chinese Baptist preschool, and I couldn’t believe that while staring at the printed program willing it to burst into flame so maybe just maybe I could be propelled in the direction of home by the gaseous explosion, we were only on the As, and I had to wait until the Ws for my niece to be awarded her bachelor’s of coloring within the lines.
Had it been really necessary to have each and every class perform some sort of mumbled and stage-frightened homage to the graduating seniors? The two-year-olds, the two-and-a-half-year-olds, the three-year-olds, the three-and-a-half-year-olds, the four-year-olds, the four-and-a-half-year-olds. Then the preschool director, in a five-minute prelude, introduced, yes, the commencement day speaker who, I assumed, was gonna announce each kid’s name, hand out the certificates, then finally release us, their prisoners.
The commencement day speaker gave a commencement day speech. To a room full of toddlers, parents and teachers like she was Michelle Obama at William and Mary. If I could have died on the spot, I wouldn’t have had a single regret.
Then and only then were the certificates handed out and my niece was in the Ws of, like, 30 kids. I kid you not, my butt print remains, seven years later, in the seat of that metal folding chair.
This suppressed memory brought out for you today by the TRDC prompt: graduation.
Lovelinks #9 is open for submissions. I have a special surprise for next week’s lovelinks #10, so make sure you link up to this one by Thursday or sign up to be a reader/commenter. Here’s a hint: it involves a prize and why isn’t surprise spelled surprize because aren’t prize and surprise almost the same thing?
The things that keep you up at night in comments…
