Event Review: My Brother's Graduation

I don't feel like posting about politics today (plus I haven't had time to read the news), so I'm going to review the events of my brother MD's graduation. I'll put it in the extended entry for the .000000001% of people who might actually be interested (there were some memorable moments). Anyway...

So, like I said, tonight was the commencement ceremony for the Class of 2004 at Plum Senior High School, a.k.a. PHS. Of course, all 4 of my living grandparents came over, and as I said in my last post, my grandfather said that Reagan "ruined [his] life." My grandfather was an insurance salesman, so I don't know exactly how. Something about Beaver County losing thousands of jobs and moving them to Ohio. Don't ask.

Back to the ceremony. It was about 90 degrees outside (this was held in the football stadium), and I was probably the only person under 30 wearing a suit and tie. Hooray for standards.

It was a pretty normal graduation ceremony. The valedictorian, salutatorian, senior class president, student council president, senior class vice president, and senior class secretary all gave speeches. I'll tell you, there are few experiences like watching 18 year-olds try to be eloquent in front of 1000 people. All their speeches were basically the same message: "We learned lots of things at Plum High School, but the people we met and the experiences we had were more important than the classes we sat through." Seriously, they all said something along those lines. That may or may not explain a lot.

The presentation of diplomas was interesting for about 3 minutes. Unfortunately, this was a class of 350 students, so it went on for a good half hour. Now, I want to rant for a second here to the people who were in that crowd:

I get it. Your child/grandchild/brother/sister/friend/cousin/etc. is graduating from high school. It's an exciting moment. But just because you're in a football stadium, you don't have to yell their name as loud as you can, scream in a high pitched voice, or go "WHOOOO!" when their name is called. And to the 2 people who had the nerve to bring air horns: If I ever find you, I will beat you so severely that by the end of it, you won't even remember what planet you live on. All right?

After that, the school board president said a few words. This part was interesting. First, she had us all observe a moment of silence for Ronald Reagan. Then, she gave his "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny..." quote, and some other Reagan quotes about education. At the end, she said "God bless you, and God bless the U.S." Draw your own conclusions. And they should be positive ones. Heh.

After that, it was basically "stand around waiting for MD" time, and I talked to my mother a bit while we were waiting. She mentioned that my grandfather (also her father, and the same one who didn't like Reagan) thinks we should nuke Israel. I'm afraid. When we got home, he saw the flag on our house and said "Take that flag down! It's dark; You're supposed to take it down!" He is a veteran, so he might know something about that (I think I mentioned in "105 Things About CD" that in WWII, he was stationed with the Navy in American Samoa. His job was to send fake radio messages to the Japanese.)

So, that's that. Like I said, MD is going to IUP. He's studying history education. Yeah. He'll be another one of them publik skool teechers. I guess that's what he wants.

Finally, if any of you actually read through this...

Why? Why did you just read that? DO SOMETHING USEFUL WITH YOUR PRECIOUS TIME!!!!