Pomp and CircumstAARGH
(A/N: The following is something I wrote for a humor class back when I was an undergraduate. Hopefully my writing has improved since then. Some details have been exaggerated to protect the Rule of Funny, including how much of a dick I am.)
Whenever I hear someone refer to their high school glory days, I laugh uproariously in their face and make a trenchant quip about how pathetic they are. I point out that if their so-called “glory days” were in high school, every day since those four or five years at Random Person Name High has shown what a complete and total failure they’ve been. That is one of the reasons why I don’t have any friends. Some people just can't take constructive criticism very well.
Let’s get back to my original point, which is that high school was terrible experience for the vast majority of the population. Classes were often boring and tedious exercises in busy work, taught by people who’d received their teaching degree when Hoover was still in office. The constant struggle for good grades in order to impress the Ivy Leagues caused no small amount of panic attacks, anxiety disorders, and psychological scarring that would no doubt resurface later in life. Of course, your peers were no help. Almost everyone around you was more concerned with either getting booze, getting high, or getting into someone else’s pants than with grades and books. The only thing really worth looking forward to was graduation, when you would leave the halls of Rudolf J. Rittenbacher High with a diploma, a smile, and a parting “up yours” to the people you didn’t like. What can I say? I'm a bit of a romantic.
That feeling of joy and release was almost within my grasp. It was commencement day for my class: one short ceremony out in the high school stadium and we would officially be high school graduates. We were having the typical graduation deal: the principal would make a speech, some other people would talk about stuff, they’d hand out empty diploma holders, we’d toss our mortarboards in the air and shout hooray, the end. I would then flee those hallowed halls of education as fast as my legs would carry me. No lingering around to drink in the moment and relive the good times. It would be too much of an effort to think of one specific “good time.”
I glanced around the crowded stadium at the sea of familiar faces. Down in the fifth row I could see the back of my ex’s head as she chatted with her neighbors. She was a nice quiet girl who became a Goth lesbian after our break up, which probably doesn’t reflect too well on me. Up in the fourteenth row, there was the guy from the drama club who said jeans made my butt look cute. I'm still not sure if that's a bad thing or not.
Over there was the guy who called me “bro” all the time and spent of his free time talking about how high he got over the weekend. Next to him was one of the five hundred or so girls who had rejected me as a potential boyfriend over the past four years. She didn’t want to “ruin our friendship,” so I did by telling her she was full of crap. There’s that constructive criticism thing again. People are so touchy when you point out areas where they need improving. Everywhere I looked I saw another person I knew, another memory, and felt a great wave of relief that I would never have to see any of these people again. I couldn’t build up that much rancor against my classmates at the moment; it was graduation, after all. The thought of imminent freedom was melting all my cares away.
Unfortunately, my cares weren’t the only thing melting. Summer, in a footloose and fancy free way typical for Colorado, had decided to arrive a tad early. We were getting hammered by heat. The balmy 95 degree weather combined with the mass of seniors crammed together wearing dark purple polyester robes was playing hell with my internal cooling system.
My biological background doesn’t provide me much of a defense for living in freakishly hot areas. I'm Irish, you see. While that does allow me to have a few more beers than most, it’s also left me with pale and soggy skin ill-equipped for constant assaults from UV radiation. If I walk around the block without a hat, I end up looking like a steamed prawn.
Burning my weak and puny skin, however, was the least of my concerns. I was becoming nauseous and disoriented from the heat, early signs of heat exhaustion. The last thing I wanted to do was cook myself to death in the middle of my graduation ceremony. For one thing, my peers would probably pose my corpse in a humiliating fashion or draw male genitalia on my head as one last high school joke. My parents would also probably tell me it was my fault for not bringing water with me. The last thing I would hear would be my dad commenting “So I guess you’re giving up on college, huh?” Thanks, dad.
My mortarboard wasn’t doing jack in keeping me cool, which is probably why it’s never caught on in casual attire. I tried to hunch over and hide in the shadow of the girl sitting next to me. Unfortunately, she was five foot two. I’m six foot three, one of the fifteen tallest people in my graduating class. I must have looked like an ostrich attempting to bury its head in one of those tiny Zen gardens people have on their desks.
Well, I thought to myself as I wiped my brow, I’ll just have to push my way through. There can’t be that many speeches on the docket.
Apparently, the god of irony heard my thoughts and decided to destroy my confidence more dramatically than a microwave oven with a ball of tin foil in it. We had not one, not two, but eight people give speeches on hope for the future and school pride and other such nonsense. I was a little fortunate, though, in that the two valedictorians decided to give one speech together. Yes, my school had two valedictorians, created in one of those spasms of politically correct behavior. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, after all. In fact, the entire ceremony had the stink of PC schooling all over it. Everyone deserves a chance to speak, even if they’re boring idiots or smarmy debate club losers.
Sweat dripped into my eyes, blurring the field. Through the haze I could see the senior lineman for the Canadian Football Squad wave to the applauding audience before taking a seat. “Thank God,” I murmured to myself. “It’s nearly over.”
The principal stepped up to the mike. “And now,” he intoned, “our award-winning Jazz Choir will sing the entire score from Guys and Dolls as a tribute to the class of 2006.” I don't quite remember what happened after that point.
I awoke with my family clustered around me. “Wstfgl?” I asked.
“The ceremony’s over,” my mom said. “You passed out.”
“So you’re alive?” my dad asked. “Damn. I was just about to call CU and ask for my check back.”
“Guh,” I muttered.
“Well,” he continued. “It’s over. I bet you feel relieved, huh?”
“Guh.”
“By the way, who drew that penis on your forehead?”
Whenever I hear someone refer to their high school glory days, I laugh uproariously in their face and make a trenchant quip about how pathetic they are. I point out that if their so-called “glory days” were in high school, every day since those four or five years at Random Person Name High has shown what a complete and total failure they’ve been. That is one of the reasons why I don’t have any friends. Some people just can't take constructive criticism very well.
Let’s get back to my original point, which is that high school was terrible experience for the vast majority of the population. Classes were often boring and tedious exercises in busy work, taught by people who’d received their teaching degree when Hoover was still in office. The constant struggle for good grades in order to impress the Ivy Leagues caused no small amount of panic attacks, anxiety disorders, and psychological scarring that would no doubt resurface later in life. Of course, your peers were no help. Almost everyone around you was more concerned with either getting booze, getting high, or getting into someone else’s pants than with grades and books. The only thing really worth looking forward to was graduation, when you would leave the halls of Rudolf J. Rittenbacher High with a diploma, a smile, and a parting “up yours” to the people you didn’t like. What can I say? I'm a bit of a romantic.
That feeling of joy and release was almost within my grasp. It was commencement day for my class: one short ceremony out in the high school stadium and we would officially be high school graduates. We were having the typical graduation deal: the principal would make a speech, some other people would talk about stuff, they’d hand out empty diploma holders, we’d toss our mortarboards in the air and shout hooray, the end. I would then flee those hallowed halls of education as fast as my legs would carry me. No lingering around to drink in the moment and relive the good times. It would be too much of an effort to think of one specific “good time.”
I glanced around the crowded stadium at the sea of familiar faces. Down in the fifth row I could see the back of my ex’s head as she chatted with her neighbors. She was a nice quiet girl who became a Goth lesbian after our break up, which probably doesn’t reflect too well on me. Up in the fourteenth row, there was the guy from the drama club who said jeans made my butt look cute. I'm still not sure if that's a bad thing or not.
Over there was the guy who called me “bro” all the time and spent of his free time talking about how high he got over the weekend. Next to him was one of the five hundred or so girls who had rejected me as a potential boyfriend over the past four years. She didn’t want to “ruin our friendship,” so I did by telling her she was full of crap. There’s that constructive criticism thing again. People are so touchy when you point out areas where they need improving. Everywhere I looked I saw another person I knew, another memory, and felt a great wave of relief that I would never have to see any of these people again. I couldn’t build up that much rancor against my classmates at the moment; it was graduation, after all. The thought of imminent freedom was melting all my cares away.
Unfortunately, my cares weren’t the only thing melting. Summer, in a footloose and fancy free way typical for Colorado, had decided to arrive a tad early. We were getting hammered by heat. The balmy 95 degree weather combined with the mass of seniors crammed together wearing dark purple polyester robes was playing hell with my internal cooling system.
My biological background doesn’t provide me much of a defense for living in freakishly hot areas. I'm Irish, you see. While that does allow me to have a few more beers than most, it’s also left me with pale and soggy skin ill-equipped for constant assaults from UV radiation. If I walk around the block without a hat, I end up looking like a steamed prawn.
Burning my weak and puny skin, however, was the least of my concerns. I was becoming nauseous and disoriented from the heat, early signs of heat exhaustion. The last thing I wanted to do was cook myself to death in the middle of my graduation ceremony. For one thing, my peers would probably pose my corpse in a humiliating fashion or draw male genitalia on my head as one last high school joke. My parents would also probably tell me it was my fault for not bringing water with me. The last thing I would hear would be my dad commenting “So I guess you’re giving up on college, huh?” Thanks, dad.
My mortarboard wasn’t doing jack in keeping me cool, which is probably why it’s never caught on in casual attire. I tried to hunch over and hide in the shadow of the girl sitting next to me. Unfortunately, she was five foot two. I’m six foot three, one of the fifteen tallest people in my graduating class. I must have looked like an ostrich attempting to bury its head in one of those tiny Zen gardens people have on their desks.
Well, I thought to myself as I wiped my brow, I’ll just have to push my way through. There can’t be that many speeches on the docket.
Apparently, the god of irony heard my thoughts and decided to destroy my confidence more dramatically than a microwave oven with a ball of tin foil in it. We had not one, not two, but eight people give speeches on hope for the future and school pride and other such nonsense. I was a little fortunate, though, in that the two valedictorians decided to give one speech together. Yes, my school had two valedictorians, created in one of those spasms of politically correct behavior. We wouldn’t want to offend anyone, after all. In fact, the entire ceremony had the stink of PC schooling all over it. Everyone deserves a chance to speak, even if they’re boring idiots or smarmy debate club losers.
Sweat dripped into my eyes, blurring the field. Through the haze I could see the senior lineman for the Canadian Football Squad wave to the applauding audience before taking a seat. “Thank God,” I murmured to myself. “It’s nearly over.”
The principal stepped up to the mike. “And now,” he intoned, “our award-winning Jazz Choir will sing the entire score from Guys and Dolls as a tribute to the class of 2006.” I don't quite remember what happened after that point.
I awoke with my family clustered around me. “Wstfgl?” I asked.
“The ceremony’s over,” my mom said. “You passed out.”
“So you’re alive?” my dad asked. “Damn. I was just about to call CU and ask for my check back.”
“Guh,” I muttered.
“Well,” he continued. “It’s over. I bet you feel relieved, huh?”
“Guh.”
“By the way, who drew that penis on your forehead?”