Graduación 2008

Let's make this report-back quick so we can get to the good stuff, okay?. The ceremony was boring as all hell, as is the nature of graduation ceremonies, except for the only-in-Tucson componant: tiny Mexican childrens playing Mariachi music in ill-fitting sombreros. (Nothing will ever top my undergraduate ceremony, where Steven Effing Tyler came on stage to receive an honorary degree and to sing “Sweet Graduation” using an Altoids box as a tambourine). And, the reception at a professor's house was equally boring and awkward due in large part to having to graciously accept a card with my first name spelled wrong from the program director who taught me and only eight others* for two years. A summary of The Others, for those who are new readers (stalkers):

1. Extremely religious older woman who missed a week of class because she burned her eyelid with a curling iron.
2. 22-year-old Stepford wife who buys baby clothes for a non-existent baby on her weekends.
3. Military mom. Lives on the air force base. Liked to tell me when I have food in my teeth.
4. Soccer mom. I know nothing about this woman except her homepage is Fox News.
5. Good ol’ boy. He likes trucks. Uses the word “butt-hurt” often.
6. Chick (alien?) who does not like listening to music.
   
7. Recovering ultra conservative Christian prone to relapses.
   
8. Me, 25-year-old spinster. Most likely to be an old-hag.

Luckily, the blandness within my cohort was counter-balanced by the colorful personalities I met on a daily basis off-campus and it is these characters (and some relatively sane girl friends) that I will actually miss and forever associate with my graduate school experience. The transgender dude with tattooed eyebrows, who rollerskated around town, and into my heart, wearing a plush frog-shaped backpack and was often seen with a box of 1000 plastic spoons, that guy my friend dated who sold hippie jewelry from a briefcase and wanted to melt down a certain type of crystal so he could ingest it and have it harden in his body and don't even get me started on the meth addicts! God, living in Tucson for just two years has allowed me to meet enough people to write character sketches for the rest of my life! I will leave you with an excerpt from one describing a favorite meet and greet from last summer:

I just met a man outside of Epic who lived in the Fox Theater on Congress Street throughout the '80s. He made a fire every night in the middle of the stage and wrote poetry. One day "some shark" came through town, into the theater, and stole his notebooks. I was tuned out for this half of the conversation (YAWN! Who in Tucson hasn't lived and built fires center stage in some theater?) but my ears perked up when he began to tell me a story involving him hitch-hiking to LA, storming into the Capitol Records building and demanding royalties for a song sung by Kriss Kross. Apparently, this shark stole the lyrics to what would eventually be known as "Jump."

Graduation pix, including ones of the party held for me by the Perez family, can be found here next week.