Pomp and Circumstances

There are wonderful pictures of graduates turning up on Facebook these days, from Pre-K, complete with cap and gown, to college.  It makes me sentimental for my high school graduation ceremony.....if only I could remember it.

Dennis tells me that is a blessing.  I asked him about a detail the other day and he said "You don't want to know."  Well, it was the sixties, you know, and you've heard what things were like back then, but it wasn't that my mind was "elsewhere".  It is more like when something traumatic happens in your life and you block it out in order to survive with your sanity intact.  Okay, the sanity question is still out, but still.....

I do remember that it was in St. Louis, at Ritenour High School.  I remember that it was very hot that summer.  Back when I was a kid, school started after Labor Day and we didn't get out till the first week or so of June, so it must have been around that time.  Heat in St. Louis is hotter than other places.  I think it has to do with the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi Rivers and several other smaller rivers all together there.  A temperature of 93 degrees doesn't sound too bad but when you multiply it by the 98% humidity it feels like 9,114 degrees.  Or thereabouts.  The air is thick.  You feel like you need to make swimming motions when you go outside.  That's the kind of day it was.

Air conditioning was a new thing back then, at least around where I grew up.  Movie theaters had it, and some grocery stores. They would have a sign on the front door that said "Come in. It's Kool inside!" in blue letters to denote ice and a picture of a penguin sitting on an ice block and when you stepped on the magic mat on the threshold that opened the door, cool air would rush out at you and it was heavenly until you had been inside awhile and wished you were wearing a sweater.  But I didn't know anyone who had air conditioning in their home and Ritenour Senior High School certainly did not.  Accordingly, the graduation was scheduled for outside on the football field.

I'm not sure where the audience sat, the bleachers, I guess.  There were a whole lot of spectators because our class was one of the first of the Baby Boomers and it was huge and everyone had grandmas and grandpas and  brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins, at least.  I think they had put folding chairs on the ground for the graduates.  We gathered in the gym, getting ready to march out onto the field in alphabetical order.  Because the locker rooms were right there, several of us had decided to wait to put on our robes ---boys wore black, girls wore white---after we got to the gym.

Remember how hot it was.  I was wearing a white chiffon dress with a full skirt that required a small can-can slip, and long sleeves.  I had spent two weeks finding that dress and I had worn it for National Honor Society  (there are pictures of that ceremony,  that's how I remember what it was), but it was so hot!   So, we had those long robes, they zipped up the front, I think, and completely covered us.  A robe is like a dress, right? Why wear two?  I took off my chiffon dress and the can-can slip, left them in the locker room and wore just the robe over my underwear.  Who would ever know?

Now, here's where my memory gets shaky.  I don't remember anyone speaking, any awards, any handshakes.  All I vaguely remember is someone droning names: ....Roy Bell....dramatic pause....Barbara Brinkhorst....dramatic pause....Larry Brock... on and on.  It was stifling.  I wanted to nod off from the boredom and the heat.  But then there was a cool breeze. A few clouds. A teeny rain drop.  Just one. Then a few.  The pauses got shorter, the graduates walked more quickly, the rain came faster and soon it was PatriciaPhelenJerryPostelwaitePatriciaPounds  (that was me).  I ran up the stairs to the stage, dashed across the slippery boards, grabbed the fake diploma (you had to wait for them to send you the real thing in the mail for some reason) and galloped down the other stairs in the pouring rain. It was not a light shower.  It was not a small rain.  It was, as we say in Oklahoma, a gully washer. 

It would have been lovely if I had moved across that stage so quickly that no one saw me, but this was not the case.  I have heard from quite a few people that many in the large audience did see me.  Much more of me than I ever intended.  It could be that I was the unwitting inspiration of the Wet-T-Shirt contest of later years, only with more class, of course.  Who knew a sopping, dripping, white graduation gown would become completely transparent when wet?

For some reason, there are no pictures from my graduation.  I will just have to wax nostalgic over everybody else's.