Filed June 12th 2012

Graduation day. It isn’t what it used to be. Remember when you’d have a big thing in an auditorium that had no air conditioning? The bleachers would be pulled out and our parents would sit sweating in their finest clothes. Now we stand in a line and wait for a downloaded digital copy of the credentials, paper copies may be bought, but most of us can’t afford it. Not like I dreamed it would be. My parents aren’t alive anymore to see it. This is supposed to be one of those days, one of those all time most important days in your life, but for me, it’s a formality, a period at the end of the last sentence in a book, probably the most trivial event of my college experience.

Of course, the journalism degree course of study isn’t what it used to be either. Three years of survival training, and a little English. I can build a fire in a monsoon, find my way out of the deepest jungles or forests, survive a blizzard alone, and get out of a hard scuffle, but the actual journalism part of the degree was handled in a few classes in one term. I suppose I’ll get the rest of the education on the job. I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a job lined up. It isn’t a job like my parents had, I’m not paid, per se, I’m supported and backed by somebody I’ve never met, but who went to the Profs for a recommendation. I made sure he would pay for the paper diploma before I accepted.

After the ceremony, I went to get my things from my room. A pack had been left for me, as expected. I don’t know who dropped it off, the Resident Advisor, maybe? Inside was my communicator, basically a satellite phone with data capability, a computer in decent shape, some cash of several currencies (not as much as promised. Whoever delivered it had lined his pockets a bit) and some bargaining chips. I powered up the computer and communicator, just to see that they in fact were working, then put them back.

This and a couple other packs of my personal things were all I had as I went out in the world. I loaded them into the sidecar on my Puch and headed off. I’d like to say that I was chosen based on my winning personality or my grades, but no. Mostly it was the bike. Having transport in this job is important, and the rest of my class was setting out on foot.

Once out of the university’s grounds, I powered up the communicator again, and sent a message to retrieve my assignment. Boston. I could handle Boston, a few days of traveling, I hoped, but I had a stop to make that was only a little out of the way. I hoped the editor wouldn’t mind a little personal business. Is the GPS system still up? Does my communicator have a GPS?

I started out on 95. It’s decent still near the city, and you don’t have to worry about traffic, but once you get out of town you run into issues. You have to pick your way around potholes, then sections where the road is nearly gone. A lot of places, I only got 5 mph. When I left the highway, going got even harder.

When I made Lake Galliard, the moon was full and the sky clear, and I couldn’t have felt more miserable. The house was mostly packed up, and would stay that way as far as I could see. I didn’t want to stay there now. The memory of having a family was too close. I wanted to know the house was still standing, drop something off, and come back, I don’t know. Years from now. When it’s better.

When you grow up by the lake, Yale is a religion. My family wanted me to get into the school more than anyone ever, but we were nouveau riche. We didn’t fit in. We didn’t belong. My father designed computer chips, high end architecture stuff, made enough money to give to the school heavily. I had the grades, and I was accepted, but the early stages of the catastrophes were already underway. Both my parents died in my first year.

They were buried in a Catholic cemetery about a mile from the house. I walked there by moonlight with my diploma, a tin, and a small folding shovel. I buried it with them. They wanted it more than me.

I couldn’t deal with sleeping in that house. It didn’t feel like mine. I made a bonfire in the backyard, and slept under the stars.

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Tags: Boston, diploma, graduation, journalism, Lake Galliard, survivalism, Yale

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 3:38 am and is filed under Lori Kim's Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.