Testify! Testify!
Today’s the day. At 9 a.m. (or thereabouts), The Boy will walk across the stage of his school’s cafetorium and officially graduate from kindergarten.
I’m told, however, that he won’t be moving out of the house or getting a job. Apparently there’s a whole swath of numbered grades above this that he has to complete before that can happen. Also, some weird thing called college where we actually have to pay for him to go to school. The details are a bit fuzzy, but the net result is that he’ll still be on the payroll for another decade and change.
They’re going all out for today’s little ceremony – all the kids will be wearing caps and gowns and there’s been a mention of some sort of reception afterwards. The Boy is excited because he gets to go home afterwards. Nothing beats getting out five hours early on the last day of school.
As you can see on the right over there, they also took graduation photos of the kids a few weeks ago. I’m not exactly sure why they had my son pose like that, but between the raised hands and the white gown, he really looks like he should be swaying and singing in a gospel choir. Or possibly passing out Kool-Aid while waiting for the spaceship to arrive at the cult compound. Either way, it’s a little on the odd side. I’m giving serious consideration to submitting it to awkwardfamilyphotos.com.
Fortunately for family distribution purposes, they also took a picture featuring a more traditional pose. That one’s not as fun though.
I don’t really have an opinion on all of the hoopla one way or another, but it’s driving The Wife stark raving mad. Anytime I’ve mentioned the graduation ceremony to her this week, she’s launched into a mini-tirade talking about how ridiculous the whole thing is. She’s not really big on the whole “warm fuzzy” concept. It’s pretty funny.
The Boy has a speaking part in today’s ceremony (which apparently leads into a musical number – hope it’s something from Cats) that we’ve been working on memorizing all this week. Well, really just within the past 36 hours or so. Sometimes it pays to have a kid with a photographic memory. I’ll be there with the ol’ camera to record it for all posterity.
Items of a non-matriculatory nature
- Just like 99% of all children, our kids like peanut butter crackers.
- When I pick her up from day care, The Girl insists on wearing my hat when she walks out of the building.
- I wonder if our insurance covers this driver?
- It’s starting to get hot outside. I don’t approve of that.
I have to agree with your wife on this one… it is quite ridiculous.. Have Fun
Get ready to be part of the Kindergarten papparazzi!
You know, we never had graduations from anything but high school, and now all I hear about is Pre-K, K, 5th grade, 8th grade graduations and it kind of smacks of the last one not actually meaning much of anything. I’m with the wife on this one. Not that I wouldn’t go for my own kid, but good greif, gowns and hats and pictures and ceremonies – overkill.
I agree that the professional photos were a bit much, but the actual “ceremony” itself was brief, fun and appropriate. A couple of kids spoke a few lines, they sang a couple of songs and then they all got to walk across the stage while people clapped for them. You could tell that all of the kids were excited and anything that gets them excited about doing well in school is okay with me.
And it turns out they didn’t actually have gowns at the ceremony, just caps. I’ll have pictures up at some point tomorrow.