Postgraduate Grotesque, Part 2

I got to class with my portfolio package, definitely not happy with how it turned out.  It’s sad when you have to settle on how something looks.  There comes a point when things go so wrong, when technology fails you and creativity slips away that you just have to sacrifice quality for completion.  It seems that’s basically been the story with me and school the past three years. 

I think I was the second person the professor called up to show my stuff.  By this time, I was tired and I knew everyone else was too so I basically rushed through my presentation.  As I’ve mentioned before, everyone has already seen my stuff before and I’ve already seen everyone else’s stuff.  Despite minor changes here and there, it’s all the same so I wasn’t about to take up people’s time and already fading attention by running through everything again.  I zipped through my flat book and flashed everyone my DVD and insert that took me so long to create.  All those hours of work for two seconds of showing off.  At first I wanted to go on about what a pain it all was to put together but then I realized no one would care.  We all have our sob stories about nothing working or coming out how we had hoped so I just shut up and popped in the DVD. 

The professor said, “This is a really good package.  You’ve really improved over the course of this class.  I know you had some trouble in the beginning..”

“And the middle and end,” I interjected.

Small chuckles from the tired audience.

He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and continued on with how he felt I really got my stuff together and turned out something good.  Hm, I musta fooled him good ‘cause I don’t have anything together at all! 

After my presentation I had to sit through everyone else showing the same stuff over and over again and all I wanted to do was just get out.  I was literally squirming in my chair.

Class was finally over but it was not time to rest.  I had to start packing.  Cleaning my room.  Getting things ready for my family to come.  They were to arrive the next day.

It sucked because, as I mentioned before, I really wanted to be able to enjoy my last few days in Savannah.  I really wanted to have this experience where my last days mirrored my first.  Before school even started, Mom and I came to the city a few days early to get settled and to just enjoy the sights for a while.  That’s how I wanted my last few days to go down.  I wanted to be able to go back to the park, to write in the cemetery, to visit my favorite places one last time before I said goodbye.  Unfortunately, while I wanted to put life on pause for a while, it refused and pushed forward like a large line of people shoving me along with them as they progressed to their destination. 

Friday was the rehearsal.  I got there at the recommended time, an hour before the thing started.  I ended up bored out of my mind, becoming restless.  It was weird because I saw people I hadn’t seen since my first year at school, people I had totally forgotten about, people that lived across from me in a dorm or people I had class with.  Unfortunately, I didn’t like any of them so it’s not like I wanted to go up and say hello.  I did not, however, see anyone I did like so I had to stand around alone like an idiot while waiting for the shindig to go down. 

Finally it was time to be seated and I had to sit in between a valley girl fashion student and a quiet, frizzy-haired metals and jewelry student.  Then there were two dudes sitting beside the two girls, one a chubbier John Mayer look-a-like and the other, the typical scene kid complete with a beard and obnoxious personality.  The John Mayer dude who sat two seats away from me yelled over to the girl sitting three seats away from me and they had a full conversation while waiting for the rehearsal to begin.  The valley girl sitting next to me talked to another valley girl sitting in front of her.  It was seriously mind numbing.  Their conversation went a little something like:

“Oh my God, why is my hood green?”

“I think it’s because of the department you are in.”

“I like red better, can we trade?”

“This fabric is not cute!  Can I just throw this in the garbage and make my own gown?  It is what I went to school here for!”

“I know, right?  Tonight I am going to cover my cap in Swarovski crystals so it’ll look super cute and sparkly!”

I wanted to stick a gun in my mouth.

Meanwhile, the scene dude was shouting random observations to no one in particular, things that weren’t remotely funny or clever.  He just wanted attention and his desperate attempt at such was pathetic.  The John Mayer guy and the girl sitting three seats away were discussing the new movie Up.  Well, more like jizzing over it.  They were animation students so of course they were creaming themselves about the movie.  “Oh my God, you have to go see it!  When the dog comes out, you will be on the floor!” 

Then the rehearsal actually began and it wasn’t even really a rehearsal.  It was more like another senior meeting that we’ve had twice before already.  They just went over how to put your cap and gown on and when the ceremonies would be.  The only thing we rehearsed was the walking out.  We didn’t practice the walking in, though.  I guess they were just gonna wing that the next day.  Looking at the people that were surrounding me, I knew the next day was going to be rough, having to endure animation nerds, Paris Hilton knock-offs and desperate attention seeking sarcasmo-bots.

Before we left the civic center, a man from the box office came up and said around five hundred students still hadn’t claimed their tickets yet.  Since our graduating class is so huge and there’s such limited seating, a certain number of tickets must be issues to graduate’s families to prevent overcrowding.  The man mentioned that today was the last day to get the tickets and after today, that was it, no more ticket availability.  No worries for me since I bought my tickets several days in advance. 

I called my parents throughout the day before rehearsal to check on their progress.  They left earlier that morning and were planning on being in Savannah later that afternoon.  After the rehearsal was over, I called them and they said they were at their hotel but didn’t know where to park.  By the time I got to the hotel, they had just given up and let the valet people take care of their van.  I got to their hotel room and as soon as Mom answered the door, she said, “Hey, Skinny!”  Who doesn’t wanna hear that when they walk into a room!

Unfortunately, the smile I had on my face disappeared quickly.  I wasn’t even in Mom and Dad’s hotel five minutes before my mom started complaining.  Dad sat back in his chair with his shirt off and was bickering with Mom about how to get the regular television stations to show up.

“Your dad and Uncle Bruce think me and Grandmother are stupid.  They’ve been assholes the whole trip.”

Well, this set me off.  All the frustration I had went through trying to get my projects done, coupled with the mess that was my room and my head, the stress of graduating and packing and getting very little sleep and having to deal with my family and now they’re already starting up with the arguing and it all just bubbled up and made my already fragile emotions snap.

“Well,” I blurted out, “If you’re all going to be assholes then I can just leave right now.  See, this kinda stuff just pisses me off.  I’m graduating!  This is supposed to be a happy time and y’all are sitting here arguing.  I just wanna go back to my room and I don’t even want you all to be here if you’re going to act this way!  You are all so cold and mean to each other!”

They both got really quiet after that.  My heart was racing and my face was hot and flushed.  I swear sometimes I don’t think my parents love each other anymore.  They’d probably get divorced if it didn’t cost so much effort and money.  Sometimes I feel they are only together out of convenience or laziness, not love. 

After a while we all settled down, although I didn’t let go of what happened.  Mom didn’t either.  All throughout the day she’d make jabs about what went down.  “Well, I can help you pack tonight, unless you think I’m too cold or mean.”  Mom, Dad, Grandmother, Uncle Bruce and I all went to dinner together and it was just as awkward as I had thought it would be.  I sat in my chair, exhausted.  My grandmother sat across from me, her mouth open in confusion.  My dad sat next to me, smacking his gum.  He has been trying to quit smoking for the past few weeks and I guess the gum chewing was supposed to help.  He sure did pick a stressful time to do something as stressful as quitting smoking.  Nice job.  But, hey, I’m just glad he’s trying.  I don’t have much faith in him, though, as he’s “quit’ before but always went back a few months or weeks later.  If he actually manages to pull it off, I’ll genuinely be happy and proud of him.

No one talked very much during the meal.  I think we were all pretty tired.  They had just come from a long ten-hour drive and I had just come from an incredibly exhaustive week of finals.  I think there was also some residual anger from my earlier outburst still floating in the air.  I just sat by and watched my family as they concentrated on their plates, food hanging out of their mouths while they chewed like a bunch of oblivious hillbilly cows.  Good Lord above, this is my family.

In between bites of my veggie burger, I asked Mom if she wanted to come to my dorm tonight to start putting a few of my things in my car.  She agreed and then Grandmother said she wanted to come along.  I kind of rolled my eyes a little bit ‘cause I knew she’d just get in the way.  I know I sound terrible and I don’t mean to.  I love my grandmother but she’s nearly eighty years old and is rather slow.  Normally, that would be fine and I can be patient with that but I live three floors up in my dorm and going up and down those steps makes me exhausted sometimes so she definitely had no business going up and down those steps.  But she wanted so bad to help out so Mom said she could come with us. 

After dinner, Dad and Uncle Bruce retired to their hotel rooms while I walked Mom and Grandmother to my car and then drove them to my dorm.  Luckily, since I was graduating, I got to stay in the dorms until Sunday, while non-graduating students had to be out by earlier that day.  When we got to my dorm, it was mostly vacant.  This left a lot of parking spaces in the front of the dorm which allowed for easy moving of boxes from my room to my car. 

We got into my room and my roommates weren’t there except for Beau and he was leaving.  After a brief introduction, he left the room.  I was secretly thankful because I didn’t want to deal with small talk at that point.  It was late and I just wanted to put a few things in my car that I had already packed up.  Grandmother stood around and got in the way while Mom and I disassembled my room.  It was a little aggravating having to squeeze by her as I went from the bathroom to my room to the kitchen and back and forth.  Eventually, Mom told Grandmother to go sit on the couch while we packed up.

“Well, OK,” she said, “but I just wanna help out as much as I can.”

Really, like what was she gonna do?  Hurl my giant box of underwear over her shoulders and fly down the stairs and slam dunk it into the trunk of my car like a basketball goal?  Like I said, love her, but she’s just not in any conditional to help out in that kind of way.  Earlier in the day when Mom and I were alone, she was saying how all this walking was really tough on Grandmother, how she was exhausted from the walk from the parking garage to the hotel and how the walk from the hotel to the civic center was going to be rough on her as well.  She also mentioned that she wouldn’t have invited Grandmother to go if she knew the kind of strain it was going to be on her.  She told my Uncle Bruce that he doesn’t recognize her slow deterioration because he sees her more often than Mom does.

“But when I see her, I notice it,” she said.

With all the other stuff happening around me, the last thing I wanted to think about was my grandmother’s fragile condition.  I can see Mom getting slightly aggravated with Grandmother, mixed with slight fear and a tinge of sadness over her slow decline.  And then my head took me to that place every child dreads, every place a son or daughter wants to push away as far as and as long as possible.  And I could see Mom in that place too, worried about her mom, seeing it and knowing it as it sinks in that something inside of Grandmother is slowly cracking.  Having Mom worrying about my grandmother made me worry about my mom and just made me feel even more stressed out than I already was.

I couldn’t worry about that right now.  I had to find those tickets.  My family couldn’t watch me graduate without them.  I wanted to give them to my mom before I forgot them and then they wouldn’t have them for the next day.  Tickets, tickets, tickets, where did I put them?

I remember I placed them on my chest of drawers a few days earlier but then I also recalled I had moved those papers while I was trying to clean and began my initial packing.  I just had toremember where I put that stack of papers with the envelope containing the tickets.  I went through one possibility, a box of miscellaneous papers that I had pushed under my bed.  After quickly going through them, I found out they weren’t there.  I then went to the stack of papers next to my door.  Not there, either.  I’m not going to lie, at this point, there was a slight panic building up in my stomach.  I then went into the living area where Mom had put another box full of papers on the ground.  I sat down and went through them.  Not there.  I was really started to get worried now.  Meanwhile, Mom was asking me questions about where everything was supposed to go and I couldn’t concentrate on her questions and the tickets at the same time.

Every five seconds, “Bran!  Where does this go?”

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Do you want to keep this?”

“Is this yours or one of your roommates?”

Meanwhile, the panic is building in steady waves as the possible location points of the tickets dwindled.  After searching through every spot where I thought they could be, I went through them again, more thoroughly this time.  Not there.  Not there, either.  Not in this spot.  My movements became fast and jerky and I guess Mom picked up on the fear in my face because she said, “Oh, no, you can’t find the tickets?”  I reassured her that they were there somewhere.  It’s not like I threw them away or anything. 

Or did I?

I recalled trimming my DVD insert the day before.  I was using an X-Acto knife and because I didn’t want to cut into my desk, so I grabbed several sheets of paper to use as a cushion to cut the insert.  The papers were ripped up pretty good so I threw them away after I was done.  I grabbed the paper from one of the possible spots where the tickets could have been.  Was it possible that I had grabbed those papers with the tickets tucked inside and cut through them and then threw them away without realizing it?  As that possibility sunk in, my mind began to spin.  My breathing became shallow and my stomach tied into knots.  They weren’t in any of the spots I thought they were and they couldn’t have been any where else.  All I could do was remember what the guy had said earlier about today being the last day to buy tickets and after that they wouldn’t be available anymore.  Even if they were, I had already gotten my allotted amount of tickets and they probably wouldn’t have any extra since so many people actually needed more tickets than were given.  Basically, I was screwed.

I had lost the tickets.

I began to cry.