Thursday, June 02, 2011

Commencement Season

For a fair number of HoCo locos this May/June is graduation season. The various college ceremonies have been quickly followed by the high school ceremonies. For some it will play out into late this month with middle school and even to some degree, elementary school graduations.

Last night, before the Chris Leinberger lecture at the Spear Center, I had a chance to get caught up with Courtney Watson. Her son graduated from Marriotts Ridge on Friday. Unlike most graduates’ moms, Courtney got to hand her son his diploma, a small privilege of office. On the other hand she also attended the HoCo graduations of all twelve HoCo high schools, including a few held in stifling heat at Merriweather.

Well, at least she attended all them as of last night. The last ones were held today.

This is a pretty common practice with all of our county council members, as well as the executive. As far as I know they all try and make as many of them as they can. This year that apparently hasn’t been too many for Ken Ulman. Last night I asked Ian Kennedy if it was because Ken was attending graduations in MoCo and Baltimore City instead.

I was joking of course.

In any event it’s a nice show of respect for all the HoCo parents who successfully marshaled their teenagers through what can be four turbulent years. It’s not a bad politics either. Last year, when Ken was running for his second term I’m pretty sure he made all of them.

He won too.

The kids on the other hand are barely paying attention to whoever is speaking much less those just sitting on the dais. Their thinking more likely focused towards which party they’ll go to afterwards.

Courtney told me that her son’s party was last Friday at their home . She said that it came off without a hitch, largely because there was also a healthy contingent of adult attendees. She told me the grads stayed up all night playing volleyball.

I’ll bet the kids slept later than the parents on Saturday though. Such is the privilege of the recently honored.
blog comments powered by Disqus