Oh, thank God…

Not kidding. It’s graduation season; everyone has to attend at *least* one, and this year I went to my brother’s. It was a nice ceremony actually; a couple of the speeches were actually worth listening to, and the rest were worth sitting through to see my bro finally pick up his all important piece of fancy paper.

About mid-way through the ceremony there was a mysterious “Special Diploma Presentation” listed on the program. So the superintendent of schools hops up on the stage and announces to the room that she is presenting a diploma to a man (whose name escapes me; I’ll do some research and get back to you) who attended the high school many years ago but dropped out early to fight in ‘Nam. The catch: the man died nineteen years ago. So his grandson took the stage, talked about his Pop-pop a little bit and then accepted his grandfather’s post-mortem high school diploma.

This story fills me equally with happiness and sadness. It makes me so happy that the family and the community respect this man enough to honor his memory and recognize his achievement of (more or less) completing high school and therefore thirteen years of education. It’s just that… why did they wait until he was worm chow to do it?? I might have actually shed real saline if an old man in an army uniform had hobbled to the stage on a walker and accepted a diploma, his eyes shining tears, but the fact that they waited so long makes my heart hurt a bit. I wish he had been there to see it.

Anyhizzle, just an interesting little tidbit for you there.