la vie de jésus

One of my roommates is screaming into FaceTime right now. Not a pissed off scream, a "I'm so excited" scream, and while I appreciate her enthusiasm for this conversation I'm so close to asking her to pipe the fuck down. But I won't, because she has a tendency to be vindictive.

Today was the 8th grade graduation ceremony at the small Catholic school I work for. I didn't have an 8th grade graduation ceremony. I don't know if many people who grew up in the 'burbs and went to public school did. Everything was just a series of moving to the next building until you became an adult.

This school is pretty liberal considering the whole Catholic thing and it has a pretty unique culture.  (I won't say much more than that because this is tied to my name and it's really not that hard to find everything about someone.)  So everyone who works there has to go to graduation, and we all pre-game it. Not necessarily together, but we split off into our little packs to get just buzzed enough to sit through the whole thing.

I appreciate that this is a moment in these kids' lives, but I have a hard time celebrating something that is expected of you. It feels like getting paid to unload the dishwasher - you do it because it needs to be done, not for a pat on the back. If you don't finish middle school you've really fucked up. Your parents have fucked up. Hell, society fucked up.

There's a fair amount of pomp & circumstance and tradition wrapped into the ceremony. The girls wear all white. Somehow all 39 of them found different knee length dresses that are also age appropriate. I kept waiting for a repeat outfit but it never came. Most of them are pretty close and I have a feeling they coordinated appropriately.

The boys on the other hand wear their school uniforms. Which is kinda bullshit. What if they want to dress up? Hell, some of those girls would have been much more comfortable in their school uniforms.  The gender differences were made very apparent (gender is actually a very big deal at this place) beyond just clothing. The girls all cried. The boys were carelessly stoic. All of the girls sang the class song at the end, holding hands, crying, and became this one amorphous humanoid blob. Most of the boys (glee club boys were expected to sing) sat and rolled their eyes.

I have a hard time believing that the guys didn't care as much as the girls, or that the girls cared as much as they acted. They've all been in school together since they were five. That's a long time, that's a lot of intimacy. I've witnessed it as an outsider for over a year, and it's my job to write about, photograph, and film their lives. They're super tight, and they're not as close. This place is a fascinating little sociological and psychological study. But the Board of Trustees would never allow that.