Despite having walked through the Campanile before, and thereby flouting the campus curse (legend has it that if you walk through before your graduation day, you’ll never graduate), I managed to successfully walk through it again yesterday.
Just barely, mind you; I had to run panting up the hill while the half-hour bell tolled, indicating the beginning of commencement. I’d had the bright idea of wearing Roman strappy sandals to (sort of) coordinate with my robe. This resulted in a frantic Cinderella-escaping-the-ball like experience, as my sandals slid off my feet, oh, about every ten feet or so. I had also planned to meet up with my roommate Paul and his girlfriend Anna. “I’ll be holding a bunch of obnoxious balloons,” she said. Turns out that about 2,000 graduates also had the same idea and were holding a variety of obnoxious balloons, ranging from KISS lips to “My Little Pony.” People wore face paint, glittery mortarboard hats, ribbons and all sorts of things to stand out from the massive blob of black, all in vain (I think there were about 5,000 – 6,000 people graduating in total?). By sheer luck I ended up running into my friend Michelle, whom I went with on the Britain trip, and her fiancee, so I did walk with people I knew.
A long running tradition at KU is that graduation day is always scorching hot, and yesterday was no exception. Once the walk started, however, it was actually pretty cool. I’d been on edge from circling the parking lot forever looking for a spot, and subsequently running up the hill, wondering how in the hell I was going to find: a) Paul and Anna b) my mom, brother, and sis and c) the boy’s family, so I was shaking as I entered the bell tower. I’d thought the walk might be sort of lame, but the experience itself, possibly enhanced by the adrenaline of sheer panic attack on my part, was really something. Afterwards, one of my friends described it as “going down a huge water slide.” It kind of was, literally, as I’m sure there was enough sweat radiating from all us poor souls under our black robes to supply an Oceans of Fun. About a million people, it seemed, stood around us on the sidelines cheering. When I walked out onto the stadium field, bulbs flashed and the audience roared, and I swear I felt like I was on the red carpet, only more astroturf than crushed velvet, and I thought I might fall down on the ground right there. (It may have also been dehydration).
I remained somewhat tired and crazy the rest of the day. I think I was a bit delirious at dinner, as I’d taken the family out to Ole Tapas (and, incidentally, got the Cornered Waitress). I had a near panic attack. I’d scanned the menu quickly, noticed that each dish was about $6 – $10 each and I’d told people to order two, and that there were ten people in total, and frantically arrived at a total of about $10,000 for the meal, probably more than the GDP of Mozambique. Horrified, I whispered to the boy, “But I don’t have $10,000 in my account!!! What do I do?!”
The boy, serving as my stability point, assured me that it wouldn’t be that much and that he’d pay for it. And everything went well, and the meal was fantastic. Huzzah! I am no longer a student.
* – The situation with my parents, stupefyingly, worked. There was a little nub when my dad forgot his suitcase (@#$!!) at the room, but I was able to sneak it out of the room in front of my mom, without her noticing. Or maybe she noticed, but didn’t say anything, and now thinks that I’m a drug dealer. Oh well.
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