Graduation...

It’s the beginning of summertime now. Time to get outside, get some nice sun, shade, skin cancer, what have you. Synonymous with this season is the onslaught of graduation ceremonies. College graduates, high school graduates, elementary graduates, and even preschoolers are getting into the action during these very momentous weeks.

Just recently my kid brother finally made his way through the trials, traumas, and hardships of his young childhood and finally graduated from elementary school. As an older brother who previously went to the same elementary school for only a year, I remembered those awesome, carefree days.

When I had graduated elementary school. I could’ve sworn that the ceremony was so much shorter than it is today. My brother’s graduation started at 9am and nearly ran until 10:30. When only about 70 kids are graduating, how is it that the ceremony is THAT long? Eh, maybe I’m just getting old; or just impatient. It seriously felt like an eternity, or maybe because 20 minutes in I happened to run out of tape for the camcorder (sorry bro, didn’t get a chance to capture the moment). Ah well, at least my mom was able to take a few pics.

As each kid had their name called off, their names were displayed on a Powerpoint presentation along with their future ambition. For example, some girl, let’s say her name is “Sarah Kowalski”...”Future...Veterinarian” or “Future...Dentist” or “Future Astronaut”. I realized these kids are pretty damned lucky. They don’t have to worry about their ambitions for awhile. They can flip-flop their interests for another 6...8...10 years? No pressure...yet. What’d my brother want to be?...”Future Computer Engineer”. Yeah that’s right. I hope he makes his way through the gauntlet of crap which is called life and get to what he wants to do. I guess it’s important for these kids to keep dreaming, and keep dreaming big, because the world is turning into a nice shit sandwich. Why is it a shit sandwich you say? Well I think it’s pretty obvious...it’s the E-word. (pause for dramatic effect)..ECONOMY.

We’ve gotten to a point where we don’t even have to mention that it’s bad. It would be just safe to assume it’s bad anyway. Even during my own graduation ceremony, the commencement speakers would always mention the “economy”. yeah, it’s bad...we know. Just don’t rub it in our faces. They kept on droning about being “creative” during this time. Does this mean that we should get jump off a cliff? Hell. I’d be on board with that. Eh, I guess they want us to basically ignore our degrees and pursue something else, whether it be a small business opportunity or something else that would involve a large sum of startup income. Umm...suuure. Give me $100,000 and I’ll certainly do something with that, but aren’t we all in debt because we spent at least 4 years paying for a nice piece of paper that basically says, “yeah you gave us ‘x’ amount of dollars”, you know nothing. Have a nice day!

Give me the statistics about how graduates this year are essentially fucked. Eighty percent of college graduates are unemployed? Hell yeah, all-time high baby. If we’re gonna have unemployment in America, we’re gonna go big with it--all time record highs.

Whatever, aside from the crap that our country is in, I’m glad to see my kid bro get out of elementary school. He’s finally growing and growing taller than me =(