Ask Smidge - Special Graduation Edition - Repost

Son Number One “graduates” from eighth grade tomorrow and moves on to high school. (It’s not lost on me that this is happening on D-day.)

There is going to be a big “promotion” ceremony tomorrow. They are going to have a ceremony, but at least they are too embarrassed to call it a graduation. Do you know what the promotion ceremony was called when I left junior high?

“The last day of school.”

Do you know what the ceremony consisted of?

The bell. Because we weren’t graduating.

So, in honor of another “graduation” for our oldest son (his fourth so far), here’s the Ask Smidge column from last year’s graduation season. Enjoy!

Due to the incredible popularity of recent Ask Smidge columns (and we’re using the word “incredible” in its literal meaning here), we have been flooded with questions at the new email address – asksmidge@gmail.com

A number of topics have been queried, but we have noticed a majority of you have graduation-related questions this time of year, so we’re doing a special graduation edition this week.

  

Smidge,

We don’t have kids yet, but my sister just invited us to our niece’s preschool graduation. Is that really a thing? Do we bring a gift?

Signed,

Kidless in Carson City

Dear Kidless,

Sadly, yes, preschool “graduations” have become a reality. It’s a bunch of two-foot-tall paste eaters whose only requirement for graduation was that their parents kept paying for them to be there, but they’ll “graduate,” nonetheless. Don’t be shocked if they have them in little caps and gowns! (You may, of course, be appalled at the self-celebrating state we have devolved to, just don’t be shocked.) The best gift you can bring is a flask of clear liquor for yourself, and a promise never to put your future children in a preschool that has graduation ceremonies.

Good luck!

Smidge,

Our son’s kindergarten teacher just emailed us about a “small graduation ceremony” they’re planning for the last day of school. Graduating from kindergarten? My son still can’t use scissors correctly, he licks the other kids, and he’s barely even aware that he was in school. What am I missing?

Signed,

Confused in Columbus

Dear Confused,

Please see answer above and just sub in “kindergarten” every time you see “preschool.”

Smidge,

What’s with these weird flat mortarboard hats?

Signed,

Graduating in Grand Rapids

Dear Graduating,

Funny story! The flat mortarboard cap with the tassel that every graduate dons today actually started as a fraternity prank at Tulane University in 1893. Apparently, there was quite the rivalry between Phi Delta Gamma and Kappa Kappa Theta back then, and the Phi Delts came up with a real zinger at the end of the year.

They convinced the Kappas that it was a new school policy to wear a “uniform” at graduation. Then they proceeded to get incredibly drunk and come up with the dumbest looking hat they could think of: a flat board sewed onto a skull cap, with a darling little tassel hanging off one side.

They added the gown to the mix and convinced the Kappas that it was super cool to go naked underneath. Come graduation day, the Phi Delts showed up in their caps and gowns, so the Kappas thought nothing of it. But just before hitting the stage, all the Phi Delts tossed their mortarboard caps in the air and took their robes off, unrolling their suit pants from their knees and putting on their snappy fedoras they had been hiding under the robes. They strode across the stage in their three-piece suits, leaving the poor, duped, and naked-underneath Kappas with no alternative but to wear their ridiculous caps and gowns to accept their diplomas.

The prank worked perfectly, but it backfired on the rest of us. The Tulane dean, perhaps still drunk from Mardi Gras, loved the Kappa’s outfits and adopted them for all future graduation ceremonies. Deans from neighboring colleges, not wanting to be seen as non-hip, went along, and the rest is history.   

Smidge,

My pot-smoking grandson is graduating from high school with a 2.3 GPA. What should we get him for a graduation gift?

Signed,

Unimpressed in Olympia

Dear Unimpressed,

A McDonald’s application and an alarm clock.

Smidge,

Our daughter is graduating from Dartmouth after six years. It took her a while, and more than a few student loans, but she is finally getting her art history degree. We are so proud! Any ideas for the perfect graduation gift for our little princess?

Signed,

Beaming in Boise

Dear Beaming,

$350,000, a McDonald’s application, and an alarm clock.

Happy graduation, America! Now get out there and tackle life! Or first grade.

(And remember, be sure to email all your burning questions to asksmidge@gmail.com)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2019 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Ask Smidge - Special Graduation Edition

Due to the incredible popularity of the first two Ask Smidge columns (and we’re using the word “incredible” in its literal meaning here), we have been flooded with questions at the new email address – asksmidge@gmail.com

A number of topics have been queried, but we have noticed a majority of you have graduation-related questions this time of year, so we’re doing a special graduation edition this week.

  

Smidge,

We don’t have kids yet, but my sister just invited us to our niece’s preschool graduation. Is that really a thing? Do we bring a gift?

Signed,

Kidless in Carson City

Dear Kidless,

Sadly, yes, preschool “graduations” have become a reality. It’s a bunch of two-foot-tall paste eaters whose only requirement for graduation was that their parents kept paying for them to be there, but they’ll “graduate,” nonetheless. Don’t be shocked if they have them in little caps and gowns! (You may, of course, be appalled at the self-celebrating state we have devolved to, just don’t be shocked.) The best gift you can bring is a flask of clear liquor for yourself, and a promise never to put your future children in a preschool that has graduation ceremonies.

Good luck!

Smidge,

Our son’s kindergarten teacher just emailed us about a “small graduation ceremony” they’re planning for the last day of school. Graduating from kindergarten? My son still can’t use scissors correctly, he licks the other kids, and he’s barely even aware that he was in school. What am I missing?

Signed,

Confused in Columbus

Dear Confused,

Please see answer above and just sub in “kindergarten” every time you see “preschool.”

Smidge,

What’s with these weird flat mortarboard hats?

Signed,

Graduating in Grand Rapids

Dear Graduating,

Funny story! The flat mortarboard cap with the tassel that every graduate dons today actually started as a fraternity prank at Tulane University in 1893. Apparently, there was quite the rivalry between Phi Delta Gamma and Kappa Kappa Theta back then, and the Phi Delts came up with a real zinger at the end of the year.

They convinced the Kappas that it was a new school policy to wear a “uniform” at graduation. Then they proceeded to get incredibly drunk and come up with the dumbest looking hat they could think of: a flat board sewed onto a skull cap, with a darling little tassel hanging off one side.

They added the gown to the mix and convinced the Kappas that it was super cool to go naked underneath. Come graduation day, the Phi Delts showed up in their caps and gowns, so the Kappas thought nothing of it. But just before hitting the stage, all the Phi Delts tossed their mortarboard caps in the air and took their robes off, unrolling their suit pants from their knees and putting on their snappy fedoras they had been hiding under the robes. They strode across the stage in their three-piece suits, leaving the poor, duped, and naked-underneath Kappas with no alternative but to wear their ridiculous caps and gowns to accept their diplomas.

The prank worked perfectly, but it backfired on the rest of us. The Tulane dean, perhaps still drunk from Mardi Gras, loved the Kappa’s outfits and adopted them for all future graduation ceremonies. Deans from neighboring colleges, not wanting to be seen as non-hip, went along, and the rest is history.   

Smidge,

My pot-smoking grandson is graduating from high school with a 2.3 GPA. What should we get him for a graduation gift?

Signed,

Unimpressed in Olympia

Dear Unimpressed,

A McDonald’s application and an alarm clock.

Smidge,

Our daughter is graduating from Dartmouth after six years. It took her a while, and more than a few student loans, but she is finally getting her art history degree. We are so proud! Any ideas for the perfect graduation gift for our little princess?

Signed,

Beaming in Boise

Dear Beaming,

$350,000, a McDonald’s application, and an alarm clock.

Happy graduation, America! Now get out there and tackle life! Or first grade.

(And remember, be sure to email all your burning questions to asksmidge@gmail.com)

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2018 Marc Schmatjen

Check out The Smidge Page on Facebook. We like you, now like us back!

Also visit Marc’s Amazon.com Author Page  for all his books. Enjoy!

Gradual Decline

I have only graduated twice. Back when I was growing up, I had a lot of last days of school, but only two graduations. Once from high school, and once from college.
(There was some question about the validity of one of them, but I can assure you, it was cleared up. Really! There is no need to check any records. Let’s all just let it go.)

Nowadays, it seems as if kids graduate from everything. For instance, this past Saturday night, I attended Son Number Two’s preschool graduation ceremony. Yes, preschool. By the age of five, my two oldest boys have already graduated half as much as I have my entire life.

I know some of you parents out there are asking, “What’s wrong with that?”
I know this, because I have seen pictures of your children on Facebook graduating from preschool in full cap-and-gown. Thankfully, my boy’s preschool did not take the “graduation” that far, but I still thought having a ceremony was a little much.

Seeing those pictures got me thinking. First of all, where on earth do you get miniature preschool-sized mortar boards and robes? Graduates-R-Us? Does the Baby Gap have a Baby Grad section?

Secondly, why are we making such a big deal out of events that used to be non-events? Is making it all the way through preschool nowadays such an achievement that it requires public recognition of each student by name? And does it require said public recognition to take place on a precious weekend evening? As near as I can tell, my boys’ greatest accomplishment during their years at preschool was learning to keep over 50% of the paint on the paper. And being in charge of the laundry, my wife is pretty sure it never got much better than a 60/40 split.

Now, maybe you cap-and-gown preschools have students matriculating that are reading Dostoevsky, interpreting the constitution and reciting the quadratic equation, but I doubt it. Let’s be serious, here. These are five-year-olds. My guess is the main reason we feel the need for any kind of ceremony is merely the photo op. It is obviously an event that is only for the parents, since the kids that are doing the graduating could really care less. They don’t know what graduating means, they don’t know why they have to stand in line, they don’t know what to do when their name is called, and all they really want to do is make fart noises and eat cupcakes. (Come to think of it, that actually sounds a lot like my high school graduation. Hmm…)

Anyway, our need for graduation photo ops has obviously gotten out of hand. I was grateful that my oldest son’s kindergarten didn’t have a graduation, but the sixth grade classes at his school had a large ceremony at the end of the year, with parents in suits and dresses, cheering and snapping photo after photo as their children graduated from elementary school.

At least a sixth-grader can understand the concept of graduation, but that fact, in and of itself, is one of the problems. We’re celebrating and recognizing an “achievement” that didn’t used to be quite such a big deal. That sends the same message as the ever-popular “participant” ribbon. Those kids have already graduated from preschool, possibly also kindergarten and the third grade, and will now go on to graduate again in a few years from junior high school, with another ceremony honoring their wonderful awesomeness, making sure that they are fully recognized by name for their amazing ability to show up.

My wife is pretty sure that all this preemptive graduating is one of the reasons that high school drop-out rates have risen in our lifetime. By the time they get to the ninth grade, many kids have already “graduated” five times. A lot of them probably figure, “What’s the point of one more? Been there, done that.”

Anyway, the more I thought about the oddity of a preschool graduation ceremony, the more I got to thinking about how the school system has changed over the years. Not only are we celebrating smaller non-achievements, but we have the opportunity to do it more often now.

We didn’t even used to have preschool. Or kindergarten for that matter. Those things are a relatively new phenomenon in our country’s history. Kids used to play outside until they were six, then start school in the first grade. That’s why it’s called the first grade.

At this point, with an average of two years of preschool and a year of kindergarten, we should really re-number the grades. First grade should be changed to fourth grade and so on.

I started out wondering why we had preschool graduation, but now I’m wondering why we have preschool at all? Is it just for the graduation photo op at the end of the year? If so, that is a pretty expensive picture! If that’s all it is, I’m just going to Photoshop Boy Number Three into one of the other two’s graduation photos and save some money.

We’ll just keep him home and throw paint on him in the backyard, and send him directly to kindergarten (third grade) when he’s five. We’ll take pictures of him in a cap and gown when he successfully completes the fifteenth grade and graduates from high school.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh, Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!

Reuniting

My wife and I had our 20-year high school reunions this past weekend. We went to different high schools here in California, and twenty years later, our reunions landed on the same night. What are the odds?

After some debate, we decided the only thing to do was to go “stag” to our respective events. No sense in one of us missing out on their walk down memory lane. I was very disappointed by this, because I was really looking forward to showing her off to my classmates. When you marry up, you really want to tell the world. Plus, many of my former classmates would need living proof that I was actually married, not just another one of my tall tales.

About five minutes into the evening, I decided we had made the right decision after all, because as I found out, at a reunion you do a lot of explaining. Whenever two graduates reunited, after the “So great to see you’s,” the spouses were introduced. After the spouses were introduced, the explanations were made. “Bill and I played soccer together. We also had calculus together, and he used to cheat off me constantly. Ha, ha.”

Once you were through the explanations, you could move on to the “What are you doing now’s,” and the “Where do you live’s.”

If you were attending the event stag, however, you could skip the explanation portion of the conversation. That turned out to be a really good thing for me, because apparently, my brain didn’t fully engage and start paying attention until about age 30.

Twenty years later, my memory of high school events seems to account for about 45 minutes of the four year period. I don’t know what to attribute that to, but it’s all just one long blur.

Many of the names and faces were stored in the recesses of my brain, but the specific events that we all shared are gone forever.

If I had brought my wife, much of my evening would have gone like this:
“Honey, this is Bill. Bill, this is my wife, Sandy.”
“Honey, Bill and I… went to high school together.”
“Thanks for the update, moron.”

I think I dodged a bullet, there.

Seeing and hearing about what everyone was doing now was great fun. I am proud to report that we, the class of 90, are doing our fair share of producing offspring. The vast majority of classmates I caught up with had at least one or two children. And after adding twenty years and having kids, I was very impressed with how well the ladies of my graduating class were aging. They were in great shape and better looking than the day we matriculated. (Had a few of you looking for a dictionary just now, didn’t I?)

The men of my graduating class, for the most part, had slightly inflated. Nothing drastic, just an ever-so-slight increase in bulk density. (And, in more than a few cases, including mine, a not-so-slight loss of hair). I attribute the bulking up of my male classmates to the high quality women we all seem to have landed. It’s no surprise that we are a well-fed and well-cared for group after meeting many of the lovely and talented ladies my cohorts somehow talked into marriage. Knowing most of these guys in high school, I’m not sure how we did it, but we all really hit the ball out of the park in the wife department! Nice work, men!

Now, don’t get me wrong about the quality of our crew. We have our share of talented individuals, both male and female, from the Davis High School Class of 1990. We have teachers, doctors, firefighters, lawyers, computer geniuses, ministers, healers, Hollywood screen writers, coaches, TV and newspaper reporters, business owners, photographers, bodybuilders, entrepreneurs, performing artists, NFL football veterans, professors, big-time graphic artists, a famous DJ, an Air Force Colonel, and even a couple of children’s book authors!

Not to mention a whole lot of parents who are raising a whole lot of beautiful children.

It was a wonderful night. There is something magical about a high school reunion that I think stems from the fact that we were all together at what was effectively the start of our lives as adults. We all crossed the starting line at the same time, and ran out into the world, full steam ahead. A group of fearless 18-year-olds that thought they knew everything, hell-bent to take on the future. For one night, twenty years and a lot of miles later, many of us made it back to that starting line to compare notes on what we found out there. Turns out we didn’t know much of anything back then.

We had a few who didn’t make it too far past the starting line, and a few who have passed away, whom we miss terribly. But, all in all, the Class of 1990 is doing just fine. I am proud to report that I graduated with some excellent people.

Thanks, DHS Class of 90! Not only for a fun evening, but for a proud association.

See you soon,
-Smidge


Copyright © 2010 Marc Schmatjen


Have kids? Have grandkids? Need a great gift?
Go to www.smidgebooks.com today and get your copy of “My Giraffe Makes Me Laugh,” Marc’s exciting new children’s book. Get ready for a wild rhyming adventure!