Me and my personal shredder

I sometimes find that I can't summon the appropriate emotions for certain occasions. I worried about this during my flurry of wedding-induced panic attacks; I was worried, yes, but I wasn't have nearly as many deep thoughts as I suspected the occasion warranted. I wasn't looking up to see dove's flying, and I wasn't subconsciously weaving bread dough into love-knots and I couldn't make my mind equate rings with dramatic symbols of unity. And for someone whose mind has been so warped by a stiff liberal education that I think Thomas the Tank Engine is a symbol of industrialization, this was a very low point.

I was considering this emotional stagnation at my sister's high school graduation over the weekend. I was sitting with my family in the summer sunshine, shading my eyes with a free program as the wind blew majestically (read: coldly) through the millions of balloon bouquets on the field. The kids were marching in time to the band, and the outfits that I remember as stifling seemed regal from afar, but even sandwiched between the tears of my older sister and mother I was sort of thinking: what crap.

Obviously I was not thinking "what crap" at my little sister, of whom I am very fond. I was directing my malice instead toward the do-gooders making speeches all about the unity of 2009, kindergarten besties, and the scary ledge of adulthood on which they all stood. I was wondering whether these kids (alright, these girls) could really muster this much emotion and hyperbole over graduation.

It's not as though I wasn't nervous about high school ending, I spent many weeks prior to leaving for college being upset that I couldn't get a clear mental picture of what my life would be like so that I could worry properly about it. I packed consciously for my dorm room (gargoyle bookends, personal shredder). But I didn't bath myself in happiness on the day of graduation and embrace the world anew. In fact what I remember worrying about most is how stupid I looked in my mortarboard and taking it off directly following the ceremony, photo-ops be damned (sadly I worried about the same thing at my college graduation and pushed nervously at it to the point that it fell off my head as I was jostled crossing the stage).

So I'm not sure if I envy or mock you, high school girls with real emotions at the ceremony. On one hand I wish that I was moved to tears by the idea of closing epochs and the exchange of friendship necklaces. But on the other hand (surely the more evil one) I wanted to take each of those girls by their Hawaiian lei and shake them until they realized that in a few years the majority of their high school classmates would become a reason to switch lines at the Walmart to avoid awkward conversation.