Senior Week

There was no doubt that I would graduate. I had finished the biggest stumbling block--the Senior Research Paper--and was passing my math class. I was on autopilot.

I was ready to be done with it all, of course, but there were people around me that I had gone to school with since the first grade. Though Allen and I did not hang out together, we had always lived in the same neighborhood and had spent countless childhood hours playing football and baseball and basketball on makeshift fields and courts and in the street. Herbie, who I barely ever saw even at school, had shared the same first grade crush on our teacher, early rivals for a pretty, young woman who would commit suicide that summer after our class had ended. Sherri and I had been rivals, too, but at spelling and math, each of us vying for top spot in our elementary classes. And Rita and Howie. . . . I didn't know them any more, but there was an unsuspected comfort in the familiarity. Of course, I wasn't the only one feeling it, and others had taken it to a sickening degree of maudlin, public sentimentality that served as a good governor to my personal nostalgia.

Graduation approached, and I thought that I would not go. But something happened that changed all of that. The senior class traditionally sat in a pattern of green and white gowns that formed the image of the graduation year. Our class, however, had decided to form the shape of an "e" to represent the new ecology sign. It was voted on and won. But the administration decided not to allow that and said that we would do the traditional thing which inspired talk of a boycott. This was interesting, I thought, something in which I could participate. And so as the day drew nearer, we grew more and more excited. Caps and gowns had been ordered along with class rings, and now they were delivered. And then, it was Senior's week, a week of no classes, a week of preparation to graduate, a week of liberation and hysteria, the first week to taste the new freedom that awaited us.

And in that week, the rebellion fell apart. It was all too much to expect, I guess, for people who had only come to consciousness in the last few months. And there were parents and grandparents to consider (as well as all those graduation presents) and invitations had been bought and sent. So by twos and threes, and then by the dozens, there was a silent acceding to the administrative wishes. But we had voted, we told ourselves, to rebel, and that was something. And then it was enough.