“Why I Skipped My College Graduation”: A Very Special Anniversary Episode

On this date, May 15th…some moons ago…

I slept through the hours leading up to my college graduation, and had fully intended to Van Winkle my way through the entire day.

Graduation morning...

The world appeared blurry. A mess of blinking colors and blubbering images. My eyelids stretched to skinny slits, and I decided that if I were to simply close them again, I could instantly collapse back into sleep’s awaiting arms.

More importantly, I hoped that sleep would make the day vanish like a shadow at sunrise.

Still drunk. I squeezed my eyes tight, and the spinning in my head slowed just enough for my memory to catch up.

Last night…

I remembered my night of lawless insentience like a list of regrets, all futile efforts to consume my sadness and fit in. Everyone was doing it. I had skillfully masked my misery with glass after glass of sparkling charades, successive shots of emotional disguises. A veil of potent liquors. It was a bittersweet celebration that concluded with my arms draped across the face of the toilet for most of the night, reversing the deep swallows and long swigs, emptying the poison from my shallow stomach. ‘Damn, Bacardi is the boss of me,’ I thought as I balled up like a fetus to strangle the intense ache in my gut.

Exhausted at the mere memory of it all, I began to snore.

My brief nap was stained with dreams of a dramatic screenplay, each second, every frame a flash of what-ifs. The dream was cast with my best friends dressed in replicas of my cap and gown, bathed in smiles and laughter. My parents holding diplomas, skinning their teeth with pride. Extended family and acquaintances living the life that I had lived for the last four years, looking more natural in the roles than I ever did. The only thing missing was the leading lady…

My subconscious spoke in layman’s terms, hiding no secret codes: I lost all pride in the four years I spent in college. It all seemed worthless and irrelevant.

I believed that everyone but me deserved my college degree.

My mother should be the one to throw on the lopsided cap as compensation for all of the encouraging phone calls to her collegiate daughter. For the good luck cards with the $20 she’d sent during exam weeks. Every dollar she sent meant something she would go without.

Daddy wasn’t to be outdone either. I thought my father deserved to button up that goddamn graduation gown, not me; after all, he was the one that had to deal with the banks, the PLUS-loans and all the other financial let downs. And sadly, he was the one person who worked as hard as I did to keep me in school, and yet his recovery from prostate cancer treatment (surgery was literally like a week prior) would prevent him from attending my graduation. The fuck?!

My big brothers and sister deserved it for just loving me.

Add to that my friends, the real ones, who would never leave me, and I felt thoroughly unworthy of walking that graduation stage. My accomplishments felt like they were just as much my family’s.

My body shook suddenly, and frightened, I opened my eyes wide.

“I’m not going to my fucking graduation.”

There were two ceremonies actually and I had been more than proud and happy to walk in the more meaningful of the two, which was held the day before. It was the ceremony for my J-school, where I walked onstage and pointed my disposable camera up at my waving family sitting high in the Dome's cheap seats, then pointed them out to the Dean of my school and asked her to shout my name clearly so they could hear it. [In case you were wondering, yes of course I was mildly shit faced…there was wine at the reception…or was that my crib?]

“Yesterday was enough. Today, me and 6,999 other seniors, not even walking a stage to physically grab a degree is an irrelevant waste of time. I’m not going.”

There was no one else awake to hear my proclamation, nor to confront me, so I hit the pillow again.

I lay hung over in my South Campus apartment in a houseful of my closest friends from home who traveled to celebrate the occassion. They would not be awake until I woke them because I was the responsible one of the crew. The one who made sure we didn’t sleep through shit like commencement. ‘Not today,’ I thought, pulling the sheets high above my head. Today I am staying in bed and I am going to let our fate rest on the shoulders of someone else for a change.

My friends were family, really. Throughout college they were lifelines of sorts, like veins and arteries rushing blood and nutrients to my heart.

But crammed onto a bed in between two of my oldest friends, I lay stiff instead of relaxed and spread out. Touching their bare legs didn’t feel as comfortable as it had for most of our lives. My best friends made me feel old. We talked grandiose tales of being grown, but my graduation weekend reeked of middle school. I was leaving school and moving to New York City for a very grown up job, one I had dreamed about for years. Meanwhile most of them were signed on for a 5th year of undergrad. I was feeing less like “the same old Wise” and more like someone else. Someone I didn’t yet recognize.

And someone else will just have to answer the phone, because, I am still asleep. By the third ring I was annoyed. Shit. I rolled over and put the ringing phone out of its misery.

“Hello?”

“Wise, it’s Shelly! Is everyone dressed?”

I abandoned my rebellion and peeked over at the clock radio. 9:15 am.

“Yes, we’re getting there. Stay Hype is in the shower right now. Gay Bartender (before her days tending bar) is doing her make up, and I, of course, am ready and waiting.” The lies came effortlessly, as did the pressure from my roommate Gay Bartender’s mom, Shelly.

“In the shower? So...Wise...Graduate, don’t you guys have to be at the stadium to line up in less than 30 minutes? I’m coming to pick up those of you who are ready. I’m at the stadium. I’ll be there in 7 minutes.”

“No, no, no! We’ll all leave together, on time. If you don’t get a parking space now, you’ll never find one later, so you better stay there. Have you seen my family yet?”

“No, not yet. Well, we were all going to drive here together but no one answered the phone when I called your parents’ house. They’re here I’m sure.”

“I’m sure they are. Keep an eye out for them. Okay, we’ll see you.”

“Wise, get them moving, please.”

“I will. See you after the ceremony.”

Shit, shit. I sat up in bed and finally allowed my eyes to see exactly what I had to contend with. My left arm was buried under a spine that shared my slim twin-sized bed. It was Wiz, a Cornell grad whose pale feet flanked another sleeping head like headphones. The head belonged to a loose guy that I barely knew. A friend of a friend. He was sprawled across the foot of the bed, fully clothed, only his swollen upper body, stuffed into a ripped, dingy-white wifebeater, actually on the bed. His legs, swallowed by sagging dark blue jeans rested limp on the floor. His feet were planted in gleaming white ankle socks just inches from the head of another friend of a friend whom I had gotten to know pretty well over the last four years.

He was what we called a Replacement Friend. See, my friends have this inside joke. When we all went off to our respective colleges, we found it was customary to befriend a guy or girl who was a cheap knock-off of your original best friends from high school. And depending on how flattering the impersonation, the replacement, when introduced to the crew, could expect to face a barrage of resentment, or in the best instances, acceptance in the elite original high school family fold. This particular replacement looked rather comfortable in my bedroom... He and I had hooked up freshman year.

I stretched out of bed, pulling the sheets off with me. I nearly broke my damn neck stepping down onto a humongous sandy brown Timberland boot laying sideways right beside the bed. I had to execute a nimble little hop to get to the window, lifting it slightly to neutralize the odor of breath, beer and butt. I then twirled back toward the door, jumping hopscotch over and around the musty bodies sprawled across my bedroom floor.

“Rough night, huh buddy?” I snickered as I stepped over a stiff body asleep in the middle of the hallway just outside of my bedroom.

As I made my way down to the living room where the rest of my friends were passed out, I realized that every thing I did in my apartment from that point on would be one of the last times I’d do it. One of the last mornings I’d wake up hung-over there. One of the last times I would ever make my way down this staircase. One of the last times I would ever wet my socks on spilled fruit juice.

Before I even reached the living room, the nostalgia was drowned out by the smell of ruin.

The apartment looked (and smelled) like animal house. Not the movie, but an actual cage of primates. Our parents were planning to come back to the apartment after the ceremony and not even my good azz could explain my way out of that mess.

The night before…

My friends had arrived at my apartment from their own college campuses the day before to help celebrate the first graduation among us. As was customary, everyone brought a bottle, covering all the bases: cases of beer, dark and light liquors, champagne, wine and bags of weed for those who indulged (Wise excluded).

The crew had it’s own pre-graduation party. Curly (one of my best friends, a Temple grad, who reminds me so much of her) sat by the stereo and stacked CDs and played a mix of 'best of' jams from college, high school and even grade school. We danced and laughed and retold inside jokes that sent us to the floor holding our sides in hysterical pain, and amused the outsiders. The open front and back doors attracted people who lived around our area, and soon there were close to fifty people in and around the apartment. When the liquor was done and the weed hung in the air above their heads like most of our inside jokes, we hit the road.

Our drunken procession walked the streets howling and singing into the dark night. The campus bars were packed and we celebrated with the rest of the university, something that felt so right. Facing the world with my friends. Partying side by side with the best friends in the history of friends, I owned the night.

And soon the liquor owned me. After-hours at my apartment eluded me, as I spent most of it in the bathroom with my girls slumped around me as I threw up my intended therapy.

*

Back to reality…

“Rise and shine!! Get up!" I yell. "Y’all got a graduation to go to. It’s 9:20. Game time is 10. Hurry the hell up. GB, you go shower first ‘cuz you take the longest. And hurry up please. Your mother just called.”

My voice was dry and the smell my own drunk breath kicked me in the nose. The mess of the living room overwhelmed me, but slowly my small army of friends was coming alive.

“You showered already, Wise?” asked Phatz, my closest guy friend since 7th grade.

“I don’t need to shower,” I answered casually. “I’m not going.”

“Shut up. You showered?”

“You must didn’t hear me.” I searched the fridge for orange juice, but knew it would taste just like the gin and juice that made me hurl just hours before.

“Wise was inspired by that movie where they skip their own graduations and go on a road trip,” piped in Stay Hype, another grade school buddy, who was smothered on the couch next to an unidentifiable body. He pulled back the cover enough to reveal his chiseled bare chest. This girl Celeste from the neighborhood wiggled under his arm, squinting against the light coming in from the back door.

“Fandango?” Phatz asked.

“Yeah, that one. You saw that movie?” Stay Hype gently lifted Celeste’s head from his arm and reached for his Newports.

“With Kevin Costner? We saw it in Mr. Geraci’s class didn’t we, Wise?”

“No you didn’t. Whatever, it’s a Saturday afternoon movie on TBS like, every week, that’s why you’ve seen it,” answered Multi-Lingual Lawyer, who is hands down the most valuable asset I earned in college, and who to this day still (thinks she) knows me better than any other friend.

“Fuck the movie," she continued. "Wise has been talking shit since last night. She passed out talking about how she wasn’t going to her own graduation because her fam would never be able to find her in the crowded stadium anyways. They’d never know. Yadda yadda yadda.

"But Wise,” MLM shifted her attention straight at me and continued the lashing, “I told you, you simple, selfish little girl, that just because you think you have nothing to show for your four years here, you can’t skip it. A lot of people made it possible for you to be here. So go eat some Nilla wafers, wash your vomitty ass and let’s go.”

I stood and applauded. Then turned back to the fridge, unfazed by the campaign speech.

"Anyone need me to roll a blunt while they shower?” I joked, hoping the prospect of a few good wake & bake bong hits would speed the progress.

“Non-smoking azz. What the hell did we come up here for if you’re not gonna walk?”

I hadn’t exactly expected this outpouring of disappointment from my friends. But I forged on in an effort to be defiant and to clean up all traces of last night’s debauchery. And in the process I found a surprise amidst the rubble.

“Entourage, what in the hell are you still doing here?” I asked.

His eyes were rolled back, and a steady stream of spit hung from his lips to the carpet, as he was laid out under the kitchen table with a red plastic cup still in his hand.

“En, where is your family?” He smelled so bad that the only contact I could muster was a light tap of my bare foot to his rippled arm. His eyes opened slowly like a blossoming tulip. Then he sat up abruptly almost knocking his head on the underside of the table.

“Oh my gosh! What time is it?”

“It’s 9:30, sweetie. Wh--...”

“Damn! Ma Dukes is gonna get up in my azz! I’m out y’all. If I don’t see you at the ceremony, I’ll be here for dinner later on.”

Entourage, who was Phatz's Replacement as my best guy friend in college, was gone like a thief in the night. I was tempted to leave with him...

Instead I made sure that in record time all 14 people in my apartment erased all evidence of the spirit world we created the night before, AND were fresh and clean and on time to watch me and Gay Bartender fall asleep in the Dome among our fellow graduates. [not drunk]

Yeah, I went. I dragged my heels, pouted, insisted and fought with my crew... but surrounded by family love, I walked tall, even smiling, to my college graduation.

Truth be told, I was just scared. Scared of the unknown. Scared of the transition. Scared of not being able to stop time and prolong the last moments of that chapter of my memoir. Scared that I might not be able to shake off the mold of sadness that sometimes managed to find me there. Scared that cancer might revisit my family [and it did].

Oddly, I was not scared to begin my professional career. I had so many expectations and goals and dreams, and I was on a high just basking in my accomplishments to that point. I had completed some great internships along the way, managed to land my dream job months before graduation, made some great friends among my classmates, did good work, and was finally going to live in the greatest city on earth.

The world was mine. Still is.

I think my fear was a divine foresight into the future. The universe was giving me a scoop, letting me know that as much as you work hard and dream big, God finds it absolutely hilarious when we say, “I have a plan.”

His plan ALWAYS wins out, and I somehow knew that I had to grow up fast and await HIS plans for me.

A lot of you reading this are who I was many moons ago… empowered by an expensive (and as yet unpaid) college degree. Unapologetically ambitious. Fiercely focused. Defining your worth by your work instead of the other way around. Considering entry level piss work your “livelihood.”

But try to remember to honor the life and ambition fueled by good family and friends. Claim personal achievements in life and love the way you would a raise or promotion. Identify and love your true selves. Then, and only then, acknowledge your 'career selves'.

It's one of the wisest things I've done. And that’s just another of many of life's little graduations I will never contemplate skipping.

[Eeeeeeend scene.]