Let's Commence!

It's graduation season, and if you aren't scheduled to go to any, you better fix that, and fast. Look up an obscure relative aged 18 or 22, tag along to your roomate's sister's hairdresser's kid's coronation, or just drive around town until you find a good one to crash (easy to spot hallmarks are generally balloons, sundresses, and mothers organizing group photos, so keep your eyes peeled). Because while disguised as a culmination of a specific phase of the education process, and considered to be a woefully boring familial springtime duty, it is, in actuality, one of the greatest people-watching adventures you could ever hope to embark upon.

Remember when you had an assignment in school, and you'd think, "Man, I'd pay good money to get out of this right now", because paying money seemed way easier than doing schoolwork? Well scratch that one, kemosabe, because there is no more unhinged and excitedly deranged creature present during the matriculation ceremony than a parent recently freed from the bonds of tuition. They scream. They yell. They bring noisemakers they were recently overcharged for at Party City. If they're aware that their little Einsteins are moving back home directly after the keynote address, they ain't showing it; their behavior would fit snugly into a WWF cage-match crowd or some kind of Guiness-fueled soccer riot. Apparently going to school is a lot easier than paying for school, and boy does it show.

Add the sheer volume of people present at such an event with this mixture of puffed up pride and financial freedom, and you've got a veritable cavalcade of adults that have essentially lost any sense of rationale or self-control whatsoever. Mothers strain with binoculars to locate their grown bundles of joy, who all happened to be dressed alike. Fathers aim telephoto lenses into the sea of caps and gowns like Ahab looking for Moby Dick. And entire extended families gawk at their own relatives as if a circus clown had just unleashed them into a cage of feral bengal tigers with only a squirtgun for protection.

It's chaotic. It's insane. It's entertainment not seen since the days of the Roman Colisseum. So take a long hard look at that invitation on the refrigerator, and rejoice! Then wait an hour or two til' the graduation party, and watch the parents faces closely, when the kid announces they're going to medical school.