Late yesterday afternoon the Howard County School System released the schedule of graduation dates and times. You can see them all in one image on Instagram.
What followed was the annual tradition which is peculiar to Columbia/HoCo: the sharing of the graduation information. For about twenty four hours, I’d say, it is socially acceptable to share this information anywhere, to anyone, for any reason. It is the local equivalent of:
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
During this time window you can post that information and receive nothing but positive feedback. No one will question your motivation. No one will accuse you of spreading fake news. There will be no resulting controversy and no one will be told off, trolled, blocked, or dropped from the group chat.
I wish there were more times like that.
As silly as it is to live in a community whose high school graduations are essentially held hostage by the commercial music industry/concert market, it is also most assuredly a blessed sign of Spring each year. It doesn’t truly make any sense to do it this way but it is our hometown kind of quirkiness and, most of the time, we embrace it.
To be sure, if you need to plan for relatives coming from out of town, or are adjusting complicated work schedules, it feels like nothing more than an unnecessary hurdle. Trying to explain that your kid will be graduating but you don’t know when or that you are going to need to travel but you don’t know when is not always an easy task.
It reminds me of the early morning taxi ride in Spain, many years ago, when a fellow choir member and I had to explain to the driver, in clumsy Spanish, that there were two train stations in town and we couldn’t remember which one we were supposed to go to. Honestly it’s a miracle that we picked the right one.
For high school students and their families, the road from birth to high school graduation has already provided plenty of challenges. “What’s one more?” You might say. Yet that long stretch from around New Year’s Day until the information comes out can prompt less than cheery sentiments. The annual “waiting for the date” game is played, unfortunately, by the folks who are the closest to hanging by that proverbial thread.
It is what it is, as they say. That’s just how we do it here.
Happy Graduation Day Reveal, to all who are observing.
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