GRADUATION
A few hours ago, my oldest daughter graduated from high school. That's something that I am quite proud of and an accomplishment she is excited by, as she should be. It's an important time in a young person's life.
It's a shame the whole ceremony was a clusterf[explative deleted].
Let's start with the scheduling; something they obviously learned from CBS. CBS's problem is with Sunday nights during football and college basketball season. Both games have a rigidly timed so you'd think a schedule would be easy to make. Even if the games go into overtime, you can reasonably determine when a game is going to end and when the shows that follow should start. Unfortunately CBS can NOT do this simple math.
The result is CSI: Miami is pushed back 20-45 minutes or longer, thus cutting off episodes on my DVR. I've got a few episodes that I can't finish because the Cowboys and Jaguars couldn't figure out how to score. Frustrating? Yep. But back to my point.
The graduation was not held at her school. Or even her school's football field, which would certainly be big enough. As for the Georgia heat, have it in the evening when it's cooler. Duh, right? No, it was held at the James Brown Arena, about 30 miles away. And ours was scheduled as the second in a series of four (or more, I didn't care to count) that day.
We were told to get there 45 minutes early so she could go in and get capped and gowned or whatever. This was a good thing as the previous ceremony hadn't left yet. I parked about a mile or so away at the first available space. I'm not even going to start on the handicapped bastard who cut me off to steal a space I was waiting on. It took me about half an hour to get the space. 15 minutes to graduation... or so I thought.
When I got in the Arena, which looks a bit ghetto, but I digress, the previous ceremony was STILL not finished. No one had left. So during that particular clusterf[explative deleted] I managed to get seats for my family (eight of us including grandparents from both sides) and friends (another eight). The friends arrived a bit late and took other seats so the time I spent pissing off strangers asking if they could sit there was for naught. Guess how happy that made me.
So I actually decide that I'd like to see her walk across the stage. And since our seats are in another zip code, I leave the family to fend for themselves and wander closer so I might have a chance of getting a picture of her on the stage.
I did actually find a reasonable vantage point. Eventually. And as they entered the 'R's, some daft [explative deleted] and her big hair decided to stand between myself and the stage, knocking my camera a couple rows away. By the time I got it back, she'd crossed the stage.
Now to be perfectly honest, you should be proud of me. No blood was shed. No bones were broken. Although the [explative deleted] did get an earful from me, and several people around me, for being a [explative deleted] and blocking the view of several rows.
On the way out, which was shortly after using incredible self-restraint and all of my patience, I noticed that the next school was on their way in. And they decided to come in limos which were parked so carefully as to almost completely block off the parking lot and thus not allowing anyone to actually get to their cars and leave.
So what's the moral of this story? PLANNING MOTHER [explative deleted]! All of the pains in my ass concerning what should have been a happy time in my life could have been avoided if someone had planned better. Believe me. They'll be hearing about it. And with any luck, future generations will not have to go through this [explative deleted].
As always, if you have any comments? Questions? Wanna Buy a book? Email me. Steele42@gmail.com.
