Grad you could make it

It may be an ominous sign that I’m starting this off with a disclaimer, but here goes: Graduations are wonderful events. They are. They allow students and their families to celebrate a praiseworthy accomplishment, and I know from personal experience that the gowns are almost sweatpants-level comfortable. You can let your belt out a couple of notches and cram down a breakfast of cake and beer and still look great in pictures. That’s not a small thing.

 

What’s frustrating about graduations is that they all follow the same pattern. Every single one.

 

Which wouldn’t normally be an issue. I mean, how many graduations does the typical person attend in their lifetime? Around five at most? Let’s break it down. Person X has to attend her own, of course; her parents made her. That’s one. Years later she has a family of her own, with two lovely children who make it through high school intact. That’s three. One of the children becomes a sword juggler hustling for change on the streetcorners of Bangkok, but the other follows a more traditional route and graduates from Northeastern with a Bachelor’s degree in interspecies electrolysis. Person X is up to four graduations now. Just when she thought she was done with them, her nephew graduates summa cum laude from a little-known university whose mascot appears to be Satan making a welcome mat out of plastic canvas. She attends. Person X has now gone to five graduations throughout her life, and since they were spread out over time, she doesn’t mind that they were all essentially the same, but with the colors and music swapped out.

 

Person X was never a journalist, though. Which means she probably didn’t have to go to three graduations within a two-week span, unless of course her sister, Person Y, has children the exact same age in the next town over. But let’s leave Persons X and Y alone for now. I’m getting tired of the Letter People.

 

The point – and I’m pretty sure there was one – is that a journalist, at least on the local level, goes to a ton of graduations. And since they’re not connected to the graduates in any way, the journalist notices things with a more objective eye, such as the general uniformity that pervades these ceremonies.

 

Think of every one you’ve ever been to. They all follow more or less the same rhythm. The music swells, and the graduates walk to their seats, marching in the awkward lockstep of zombies getting up to pee in the middle of the night. There’s an opening speaker. Then another. Then a musical number. Then two more speakers, then the handing of diplomas. Then everyone throws their caps in the air and cavorts with family before heading off to various graduation parties, many of them consisting of pick-up games of basketball and bittersweet reminiscences of the time they filled Joey Flapperdoodle’s locker with canned foam. Poor Flapperdoodle. Between locker pranks and his penchant for playing chess in Harry Potter garb, the guy just couldn’t catch a break.

 

The cookie-cutter sameness of these ceremonies is somewhat necessary;  budget constraints make it virtually impossible to hire the rock band U2 to send off graduates with a pyrotechnics-laden performance of “Beautiful Day.” And for anyone not suffering from overexposure, these events are still nice capstones for the young men and women in their flowing robes. Graduating high school isn’t as simple as most of us remember, and it’s a milestone worthy of a fuss.

 

Still, in an alternate reality in which money doesn’t matter, it would be nice to stage a really rockin’ extravaganza, something to break through the monotony. For the graduates, yes, but also for we, the jaded journalistic audience.

 

Consider the following fantasy scenario.

 

Awesome High School is about to kick off its commencement ceremony at the former Civic Center in Portland. The lights dim. The audience hushes. Suddenly, the opening chords of “Sweet Emotion” shake the walls as Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler ziplines from the rafters to the stage, dressed in a zebra-print leotard and combat boots the bright neon green of radioactive chemicals. The curtains part to reveal the rest of the band, decked out in Awesome High School’s trademark purple and orange. (Students endure a lot of headaches at Awesome High School.) After a few choice numbers, the students come running onto the floor full-tilt, bursting through a large paper cutout of their logo, a generic superhero drop-kicking a Nazi in the teeth. They’re ushered in by a recording of the theme music from “Rocky” and an indoor fireworks display just a few degrees cooler than the surface of the sun.

 

Speech time. Only, instead of the usual faculty speeches, comedian Louis C.K. rises to the podium from a hidden trap door and delivers a virtuoso half-hour set, crushing with a riff on how history would have played out had Abraham Lincoln won the presidency in a rap battle. The valedictorian and salutatorian then dazzle with a bravura performance from Riverdance; and festivities come to a close with Megadeth axeman Dave Mustaine shredding on a 12-minute guitar solo while prop comic Gallagher smashes watermelons with a wooden sledgehammer.

 

Now that’s a graduation.

 

But you know what? Maybe I’m being selfish. Even though that epic commencement would be talked about for years – nay, decades – it would be geared primarily toward the rare group that’s perhaps a little grad-weary from years of exposure. The focus should be on the graduates, of course, and it usually is. It’s just that you can’t stop a guy from dreamin’, and I’d like to think that one day, with the right school and under the right circumstances, something spectacular will happen.

 

In case it does, someone should tell Steven Tyler to keep his June schedule clear.