xtcian

6/5/03 Boston, MA We drove

6/5/03 Boston, MA

We drove up to Boston today to see a family member graduate from a public high school. I mention that it is public because graduations dealing with these sorts of numbers are very different from the small, neurasthenic gatherings we endured in prep school - this event was the Wal-Mart of commencements. I was fascinated to see the usual cast of characters present, from the A-V Girl who doesn't know her own power yet (even though her fellow A-V geeks have been pining after her since 10th grade and won't have the nads to ask her out until they're 27):

...to the lovely-yet-self-conscious blonde who spent the entire ceremony looking for people who might have missed her:

Although the evening was interminably long and featured a not-too-terribly-funny comedian, Tessa and I agreed that the valedictorian was worth the price of admission. He had a curriculum vitae a mile long (that included sports and the debate team), but his actual character was magnanimous and unassuming. After a few minutes of putting the day into perspective, he launched - and I mean launched - into the Bush administration's idiocy, cruelty, lies and overweening hubris, to the cheers of the crowd below. He told us that as long as his generation was around, there was hope that everything could be fixed. I thought he rocked.

If Neil Howe and Bill Strauss had come with us, they would have seen a twisted fruition of their Millennial Generation prophecies - although this kid was deeply anti-government (N&B say that Millennials tend to toe the party line), his optimism and civic duty was truly stunning. This dude would not have survived a day in my generation. He would have been thwarted by ennui and rage, and his valedictorian speech would have been akin to a giant "FUCK OFF."

I thought of my own graduation, a morass of sweaty, miserable 18-year-olds stuck in ill-fitting tuxes down in the sweltering June heat of Norfolk, Virginia. There were only 99 of us, but it seemed like thousands. One detail: every year, the graduating class has a "joke" they pull during commencement; one year, every graduate had a marble, and gave it to the headmaster, who was fumbling to hold them all by the end.

My year, everyone was given a cigar - and everyone gave them to the headmaster until about fifty people had done so, then they started giving them to all the teachers. Being a Williams, and therefore next-to-last in everything, all the teachers had a cigar by the time I got my diploma, so I thought it would be cool if I threw my cigar into the audience, where no doubt someone would catch it.

Instead, a deathly silence fell over the crowd when I threw it, and it fell several rows from the back of the gymnasium. Nobody budged, and I actually heard it drop behind some parent. An uncomfortable silence ensued, and everyone just looked at me like I was a total fool. I walked out of there utterly embarrassed and wondering what had happened; a perfect metaphor for my high school career.

I have never been back.