If you’re looking for me today – and I prefer to think that you will be – I’ll be unavailable.
See that sweating chick over there in the black pants and white button-down shirt? Yeah. That’s me, picking up the abandoned dishes at the graduation buffet, running to get your grandparents another cup of coffee, and furtively checking my watch to see how much time is left.
What? Of course I wish them all the best! Good for you, graduating from high school!
What happened to the good ol’ fashioned graduation party? The one where your mom put out ham sandwiches and potato salad? The one with the keg in the garage and the cigarettes we stole from your dad?
Oh, wait. I think I may have answered my own question.
When I graduated from high school, the legal drinking age was 18. The very next year the age shifted to 19, and just a couple years later it went to 21.
As Maxwell Smart used to say: Missed me by that much.
I’m sure there are still plenty of rowdy graduation parties around – which is, at least in my mind, a fitting way to finish your formative years. To hear some people speak, though, the idea of an 18-year-old drinking several beers and sitting in a garage with a number of other similarly impaired youngsters is a bad thing.
Which brings us back to the catered graduation banquet.
I don’t mind working summer parties, although I must admit I could do without the black pants. It’s harder to keep a smile on your face when you’re starting to overheat, although once the hallucinations kick in it’s actually easier to keep a smile on your face, so it all works out, when you think about it.
So there you go. Well done, high school graduates. Be well. Drive carefully. Enjoy your fresh fruit and sausages.
And don’t let me hear you making fun of my uniform.
About Bob Dylan
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17 comments:
Keep a smile on today, Pearl and your ears open for great blog fodder too!!
Ummm.. working with no pants at a graduation banquet... hmmmm, what a thought...
Preschool graduation...kindergarden graduation...eighth-grade graduation...h.s. graduation...and all with parties. Too much!! Some kids are way over-indulged. But it does provide you with some extra dough, so that's a plus!
Yikes! Well, at least it's only for one night! And you probably look smokin' in the black and whites. No?
21, really? Oh my, in England the drinking age is 18+, not that most people wait 'till then :) I hope you have a wonderful time at the graduation party, try not to miss us too much :D
the black and white uniform affair... yeah. I don't think they'll let you HEAR them making fun of it... :D
And another post that makes me smile... I swear, this blog, it never fails.
It's like New Year's Eve. Too much anticipation. Never as good as you think it will be. I got lucky. We had our grad party in a huge field on the farm belonging to the family of one of our grads. Huge barn, huge burgers, byob. My buddy was worried when he couldn't find his gf so we climbed a huge (that word again) rectangular stack of hay bails that were probably 8 bails high and 30 bails long. We thought we could have a better vantage point to see around the whole field to find her. Our weight on the wobbly stack caused one corner to fall. As bails fell behind us we ran across the top of that stack like we were on the top of an exploding airship in a movie about the Hindenburg. Finally the flow caught up with us and we crashed on top of the falling wall of bails totally unhurt and laughing our asses off. We felt so guilty that we asked for the use of the large wheelbarrow so we could go around collecting beer cans for the farmer. It was great. We could go around schmoozing with everyone and get some of the bad karma taken off our record. The farmer was pissed the next day when he had to restack all those bails but never knew we were the ones responsible.
Of COURSE they're going to make fun of your uniform...they're just getting out of high school! hahaha
I have never heard of graduation brunches around here...they are always mid afternoon potlucks or early evening potlucks....then the graduates go somewhere in the deep woods to somebody's camp and drink the keggers. ha
Oh, I would hate working at an event like that. Something is indeed lost in the experience should that kind of event be catered--I have to agree with you.
Nobody used the shoe phone like Maxwell Smart...except Liza Bean Bitey (of the Minneapolis Biteys) and hers is a black leather pump with a carved wooden heel...she's so stylish!
=]
We had to go across the line to the District of Columbia to get our beer at 18. Of course, I was only sixteen, but what are friends for? I don't remember much after that. Not till my mid-thirties.
Wow, you took me back there, both to when I worked catering in college and to the fact that I came to MN at age 18 for college, was "of age" at 19, and then got grandfathered in (while my slightly younger freshman friends didn't) when they upped it to 21. Good times.
Catered graduation party. Pssht. We just drank Milwaukee's Best and smoked weed, like any other Wednesday night.
@Murr Brewster--did you happen to go to that liquor store right on the D.C. side of Key Bridge? Was it Dixie Liquor? Or Eagle Liquor? My high school in VA was 15 minutes from there. I started going with my terrible fake I.D. at age 16.
So where are the photos?...of you resplendent in your uniform. It's still done the old fasioned way here in OZ. (for most kids) Safer they get smashed at home where they can be controlled and tucked into bed when they get all tuckered out.
What were you talking about again,
I'm a little drunk right now.
@ Beta Dad, yes, I think it was Dixie Liquor! I just stayed in the car. I probably looked like I was nine. I was a Yorktown girl.
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