On the Eve of Graduation

They tell you your whole life that you’re the class of 2003. But it’s just a number to you, something that represents nothing, except a time that will never come. You imagine in the middle of your first grade year, as you sit there counting out the Cheerios for your share of the 100-day snack celebration, that this year will never end. It’s been too long already; you’ll be stuck as a first grader for the rest of your life. Imagine your surprise as you’re signing (in print, of course, since they haven’t taught you cursive yet) the teacher’s end of the year card. It’s finished. It really ended.

So you start thinking, well, it could really be a fluke. But it’s a start, anyway.

And the years begin to move a bit. Elementary school kind of breezes by, hell though it becomes towards the end. Middle school is not only hell, but every person in that building is Satan himself. It gets better.

High school comes along and by then you really know the score. The time’s moving fast now, and you know four years’ll be gone in no time. Really you do. But in the meantime, you’ve only finished two-thirds of your schooling. You’ve got a full third left to go. And that’s nothing to laugh at.

You change so fast in high school that by your senior year, it’s like you’re a different person. And yet when you look back to that day in first grade, you really aren’t so different. You only kind of faked a change through your later elementary and middle school years, which you later realized was not you at all. So you ended up the same as you were in the first place, only older and wiser. You know the name of the game now, and how to play.

But the next time you look up, it’s over. The class of 2003 has graduated and school’s over. For real and for good. You remember how they told you that you were the class of 2003 back in kindergarten, and they even made Christmas ornaments that told you so. Back then 2003 was a space-age date that would never really come. Like in all the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, the black-and-white ones from the 40’s that you were just young enough to watch. Year 2000 was the biggest deal ever, when everyone would have a flying car, and ray guns would disintegrate people on the spot. It was 1990. We had ten more years before that even came, time we could use to invent these things and get ready for the hyper-modern era that was so obviously intended for us. Oddly enough we did have the technology to make some of these ridiculous things when the time came, but everyone knew they weren’t practical. We dreamt of the “someday” anyway.

That was the only time we knew of. We couldn’t think of 2003 as a time of life. Not life the way we knew. But suddenly it was. Thirteen years had passed and school had seemingly miraculously ended. It seems like it’s been forever, and then again, it seems you only blinked and the time was gone. Almost like meeting your true love for the first time. You know so quickly that the rational part of your brain tells you to step back, because you only just met. But your heart knows you’ve been waiting forever.

The aftermath, though, is quite unbelievable. Because in an instant, your life has changed. There will be no more routine of getting up at 5:30 in the morning and heading off to take the bus into school, following a rigid class schedule, and walking the line carefully. No more administration’s ridiculous policies, in place only because a few idiots spoiled it for the rest. No more required schooling at all. No more living at home with parents. But most of all (which encompasses all of the above), freedom. The freedom to choose what to do next. You never believed that it would really be yours, that you’d be done with the school that seemed your whole life, that you would become an adult and be faced with college, career, family choices. Part of you knows you’ve already begun making the decisions. You know what you’ll be doing next year, and maybe for a few years after that. You’ve got goals you’re heading towards.

Even though, you can’t grasp ahold of that immediately. You’re still too much in shock that that magical date they told you existed, that huge milestone you’ve prepared for for thirteen years of your life has suddenly been rendered a memory, nothing more. As with everything you anticipate that becomes a memory, you’re left a little dazed, a little surprised, a little happy, a little sad. But this one’s bigger because they build you up to it your whole life, and you don’t really believe it’ll happen until it’s nearly upon you. Then you’re afraid. Only because it’s “that adult thing,” and everyone knows (when you’re a child), that all children will remain children forever, and all adults were born that way.

Yet it’s time you faced it. Things remain quite unchanged, because most people are not going anywhere tomorrow. They’re not going to school, for sure, but they’re not leaving home or getting married or taking to a full-time job. They’re going to have their summer, just like all the school children. That they’re not school children really doesn’t occur to them anyway – maybe it can’t, because it’s still pretty unfathomable. Regardless they live their lives as though it has happened and it has been very significant; and as if it hasn’t happened, and they are perpetually young. And that they are, as is everyone at every age, if they carry a little hope and happiness in their hearts.

So the days are somehow yours. You’re an adult, miraculously, a good and moral one, the kind your parents always wanted and so did you, without realizing it. Now you are that, and only when you stop to marvel does it really hit you. The days to come must be taken as they arrive, as they have been in all the time that has passed. So even though your milestone’s gone, not too much has changed. It’s still life, and there are still milestones ahead of you. You’re just waiting to encounter them, one by one, and make memories of them. So until you encounter the next one, you’ll wallow in the residual shock of losing the anticipation for this one. Congratulations, class of 2003.