Much of the scene last week\u00a0was similar enough to verge on d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPomp and Circumstance\u201d played while a long procession of young people made its way to assigned seating.\u00a0Girls wobbled and clomped in high\u00a0heels,\u00a0boys swaggered and strutted.\u00a0Parents whispered,\u00a0shouted\u00a0and sighed\u00a0while waving\u00a0congratulation signs.\u00a0Student\u00a0faces on\u00a0sticks\u00a0bounced\u00a0around like\u00a0those\u00a0you see at a political convention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Up front was the\u00a0customary gathering of\u00a0too many\u00a0officials,\u00a0dignitaries\u00a0and noteworthy types. I am\u00a0pretty sure\u00a0they are called \u201cnoteworthy\u201d because they all have notes and think\u00a0they have something worth saying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Become A Member<\/p>\n
The Apopka Chief does not have a paywall, but pavement-pounding journalism is not free. Join your neighbors who make this vital work possible.<\/p>\n
See Member Benefits<\/a>Join Our Newsletter<\/a><\/p>\n For the most part,\u00a0they\u00a0do\u00a0not.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n You\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0blame AI for this because\u00a0people have been wasting\u00a0breath in much the same way since\u00a0speakers wrote their notes\u00a0with\u00a0quillpens. The\u00a0speeches\u00a0kids ignored\u00a0last Thursday\u00a0were\u00a0the\u00a0same\u00a0verbal sunshine\u00a0I\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0pay any attention to\u00a0in\u00a01968.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cAs you go forth down the path\u00a0of life to meet the challenges in this new\u00a0beginning, harvesting\u00a0the crop of success sown in these classrooms and watered with the sweat and tears,\u00a0taking up the banner\u2026\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And so forth. After the microphone has been handed off a few times, it is like having bees live in your head. But, as worn out and overused as the speeches are, what else would the\u00a0speakers\u00a0say? \u201cYou have a bright future BEHIND you?\u201d Or maybe \u201cGood\u00a0luck.\u00a0If there were any\u00a0real\u00a0jobs out there,\u00a0I\u2019d\u00a0have one\u00a0myself\u00a0instead of being a school administrator?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n I wondered what I\u00a0might\u00a0say\u00a0if I had the mike.\u00a0Anything\u00a0I could add to\u00a0the\u00a0standard\u00a0speeches?\u00a0Nothing came to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u00a0were a couple of big differences between this and my\u00a0long-ago ceremony.\u00a0<\/p>\n The lesser but still significant jolt was the appearance of the kids. The girls were\u00a0almost uniformly\u00a0in eye-catchingly short dresses \u2013 the \u201cmini\u201d\u00a0apparently standing\u00a0for \u201cminimal\u201d \u2013 with a\u00a0few opting\u00a0for the longer, more formal and form-fitting \u201cprom look.\u201d There was a lot of \u201cbig hair,\u201d obviously salon styled,\u00a0and not all of it was on the girls\u2026\u00a0blue and purple highlights here and there along with sprinklings of glitter and a few styles I could only characterize as unfortunately creative. Boys were all over the place with their clothing, ranging from plain white James Dean T-shirts to seersucker sport coats and blue suede shoes. Two\u00a0had on\u00a0identical white tuxedoes with dark velvet trim, sparkly bowties, Ray Charles sunglasses, and rhinestone-encrusted footwear.\u00a0<\/p>\n High school students could not have gotten away with that in my day, which leads to the second shocker. This\u00a0was not\u00a0a\u00a0high school graduation. These were EIGHTH GRADERS!\u00a0<\/p>\n All\u00a0the\u00a0bouquets of flowers large enough to drape over the neck of a Kentucky Derby winner, tuxedoes, gowns, signs that\u00a0say\u00a0\u201cYOU MADE IT,\u201d and speeches about\u00a0picking up the banner and carrying it forth to bright horizons were\u00a0for\u00a0a middle-school promotion,\u00a0kids who have yet to face acne.\u00a0<\/p>\n It seemed a little much, but it did give me an idea of how to update and upgrade the traditional speech for such an occasion. The noteworthy could say, \u201cthere is one\u00a0challenge that is unique to\u00a0these times, one that will be faced by parents and students alike.\u201d And then he or she could pause dramatically, look around the room at the gathering of fidgety students and parents perched uncomfortably on bleachers without back rests, take in all the decorations, the\u00a0expense\u00a0and the excesses of an official ceremony, and continue:\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn just a few years, you are going to have to do this all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Much of the scene last week\u00a0was similar enough to verge on d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\u00a0 \u201cPomp and Circumstance\u201d played while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139,141,140],"class_list":["post-289502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}