electric mist

graduation

When Luke graduated four years ago, I never actually got to see the graduation part. We were seated in the Centrolplex Theater, which is fairly large and not very good seating (it's not stadium seating), and I was behind two people who were at least nine feet tall with bouffant hair. I thought the zoom lens on the camera would be enough to help me see (and get a photo), and not only did that not help me see, but the photo was gray, since apparently my zoom lens wasn't strong enough and my flash hates me.

So this time, it was going to be different. I had a digital camera with a powerful little zoom lens, and when we got there ("there" being the Pete Maravich Assembly Center with stadium seating), everyone in the family sat up high. They could all see fine. I could not. Did I suffer in silence? No, I did not. I moved the entire three billion people in our family down to the lowest row possible (which was still far above the floor). We were in the "front" row with just a railing between us and a fifteen foot fall, but at least we could see the graduates. Sort of. There were blue caps and gowns and hair, so I suppose some of them may have been grauduates and not some prank by the school system before tossing back out children and taunting us that we would have to keep sending them to school until we begged for mercy. Everyone kept telling me, "Oh, there's Jake! See him! He's waving!" and I would look out over the sea of blue and have no clue which one was my child, which one might possibly be waving in my direction given all the tooing and froing and waving and jumping around they were doing pre-ceremony. Finally, embarrassed, I nodded and just felt like a very bad mom. I mean, what kind o mom doesn't know her own kid at graduation? I didn't know which one was mine in the nursery when he was born, but hey, they were all fat and bald and crying and I was still wonky from birth, so I had an excuse. But he's been here for 17 years now; you'd think I'd have the ability to recognize him in a crowd. But no.

Luckily, I brought a little monocular glass thingie and I used that to find him. Except I was holding the monocular and the camera (right in front of that railing over a 15 foot drop) and the cell phone rang, and it was Jake. So I'm talking to him, using my monocular and camera to try to pick him out of the crowd as he's talking to me and of course, he's down on the floor and can tell I have no clue where he was because I'm aiming said monocular the wrong direction, so he starts messing with me, telling me he's in different places other than where he is. I finally found him, the little rat, and he laughed. I was so happy to have found him, I nearly jumped up and down, but with the dizzy still happening, going over the railing featured prominently in my mind at that point, so I stood still.

The ceremony started, and I don't know quite why people who organize graduation ceremonies think it's best if all of the graduates walk in so slowly that by the time the last one has finally made it to their chair, you could have birthed, schooled and graduated an entire extra child. I kept playing with the digital camera because it wasn't taking photos of the stage area very well -- they were (big surprise), dark and gray. But I realized there was a "landscape" view on the damned thing, which I set, and voila! finally, I was getting the photos and they were well enough lit to tell there were humans in them. I was so excited by this, that when Jake got up there and they called his name, I knew I was going to get a photo. I whooped for joy, promptly smacked the menu button on the camera, which put the menu up and I couldn't get it off and back to the camera part for a couple of seconds... just in time to miss Jake receiving his diploma and I looked up to see him disappear off to stage left.

I'm two for two on the sucky mom thing. Grrrr.

At least he's done and it's over and he's graduated. Whew.

Posted by toni at May 18, 2004 02:43 PM