Pomp and circumstance

I woke up an hour before I had to be at graduation and remembered that I still hadn't bought my tassel. I tried looking for mine from high school but to no avail, so I made one out of leftover white embriodery thread and a heart-shaped pin. I liked it better.

The theatre majors lined up together and walked with the rest of the thousand across campus to the football field. Seth and I had a cigarette on the way. My hat blew off twice, the tassel fell off once, and I lost a flower on my purse. The commencement speaker's general message came across as "It's ok to have dreams, but you should have a backup plan when those don't work out, because you might die at a young age."

We were in the fourth row from the front and gave each other hearty cheers when our names were called. My hat blew away again and my cords slipped off as I walked away from the stage. When I got back to my seat, the excitement was electric. It wasn't as monumental for me as it was for the others, but right then I was glad that I'd let Rosemary and Seth talk me into walking. It was like fireworks, or the big bang theory--we'll go separate ways, and time and space will push us further and further apart, and maybe some of us weren't really that close to begin with, but for a brief point in time we all shared the same...well, spark.

It was shorter than I expected. I got to chat with my professors afterwards over cookies and punch. Ron found the flower to my purse and instinctively knew it was mine.