Commencement

Who actually likes going to Commencement ceremonies? I don't see any hands raised.

I taught my first class of 8th graders five years ago, and they just graduated on Friday night. Go them! As a token of my sentimental heart, I even braved being in the car for another fifty minute drive (one way) so I could be there.

What I will say for this small town is that they sure know how to put on a graduation. It was outdoors in their stadium, and at the end of May, the weather is usually nice for it—nice for people like me, at any rate, who don't start sweating the second it gets above 70 degrees. The breeze was nice enough to keep things comfortable but not so strong that it messed up my hair. That was a good thing, because I used a flat iron for the first time in about a year.

The other great thing about it was that the wind kept hitting the microphones so we didn't have to hear very much of the speeches. I was slightly disappointed I couldn't hear the salutatorian better, but oh, well. He's a good kid, and I could guess what he said.

And—here's the most remarkable thing—all the administrators and community organization representatives kept their speeches short and sweet! Nothing over five minutes. Wow. It shifted the focus to the actual graduates, who were able to walk leisurely down their strip of track, get their diplomas, hug the announcers, and get their tassels switched.

It was all over in less than 90 minutes. I think that might be record timing.

Nonverbal Punctuation

I just noticed that people punctuate with things like smiley faces [ :) ] and other facial expressions. Our written language is becoming more sophisticated, maybe.

But also more confusing. My 8th graders asked me once why I was using frowny-faces on the dry erase board. It was because I was giving them a dictionary-style definition--

Frown : ( noun ) an unhappy facial expression, otherwise known as a colon and an opening parenthetical mark.

Heavy-handed Metaphors

Amazing Grace is one of my favorite movies. Beautiful story, beautiful script, beautiful acting. It's even based (somewhat loosely—I do so love Rufus Sewell, but he/the writers took some serious liberties with the character of Thomas Clarkson) on true events.

In one of the scenes, Wilberforce and Pitt have a footrace across the yard, with no shoes. At the end, Wilberforce says something about how he can never feel the thorns until he stops running; Pitt replies that he just needs to keep running.

"Is that some heavy-handed metaphorical advice for me, Mr. Pitt?"

How does this apply to today? It doesn't. Not really. I'm always trying to think of fantastic extended spiritual metaphors for my experiences with running. It doesn't work—everything I come up with just sounds pretentious.

So, for the record, I used to have a vague idea that if once I ran a marathon, distance running would forever after become a no-pain, no-sweat walk in the park. Not so. Running is killing me! Sometimes I don't even want to do it.

I had to positive self-talk my way from beginning to end this evening, and it was only 3 miles.

To give myself a little credit, I am learning to run a new way, and it takes its toll on some leg muscles I haven't developed yet. That, and there is the full time job that has to be worked around.

Sometimes I wish I had some heavy-handed metaphorical advice from Billy Pitt. After all, he became Prime Minister at the age of 23.

Style

I am just now reading The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I wonder, after having this long-standing love affair with words and phrases and clauses and sentences and paragraphs, how I never knew enough to actually read this book.

It seems I thought I didn't need to read it, expert that I am in the mechanics of the written word. Not so. Chock full of examples of such terms as participial phrases, pronominal possessives, and adjectival modifiers, it is every language lover's dream come true.

I think it ought to be required reading for every speaker and writer of the English language.

Are People Getting Crabbier?

The other day I was in CVS buying conditioner and a new scrubby sponge. As I completed my transaction, the line suddenly got really long, and the cashier was visibly stressed. Then a customer came up asking an odd sort of question, saying she had been told by the guy in the back to come to the front. The cashier promptly set her phone to intercom, and yelled into it,

"Raymond, do your job right!"

Wow. I thanked her and gave her a nervous smile before going on my merry way.

I don't condemn, because I have worked in retail before, and it's a tough business, but I really wonder why that's suddenly acceptable behavior when even a few years ago it would probably have gotten her fired.

One of the titles of the TLA workshops was "Are People Getting Crabbier?"

My answer to that is an emphatic YES.