Normal People
Your parents are normal people who can’t afford to take their kids and his/her/their friends and friends’ friends and hangers-on out to an open bar meal with baby pheasants and entrees decorated with fresh blossoms.
The average American can’t afford an Emergency Room visit let alone dinner for 10 at Outbreak Steakhouse or The Fragile Flower Bistro Box.
It is normal for your parents to be poor or struggling. Even though we see America through the cell phone lens of the 1%, 32.7 million people in this country are in poverty and expect to be looking for on-street parking as the Commencement Address begins.
Attending your graduation is a financial hardship for your parents, fraught with lost wages, surprise service fees and overages. Plus the poorer you are the better you tip! Another poverty tax.
Your family cares more about your college graduation than rich parents do, and they are likely to attend in large numbers down to the estranged cousins. Especially if you are a First-Generation College Student, graduation is a deeply meaningful event treated with care and respect.
If you were sometimes embarrassed by your parents at the start of college as you struggled to fit in with richer students, you are proud of them now and you see this as their special day. You chip in for the Dairy Queen parking lot party you know they can’t afford. When your Mom tries to order a Pup Cup to save money, you step in with your Work-Study earnings.
Your mother saves every memento of the day and preserves them in a special album.
Richer People
Although your parents can afford to take you and your friends out to the restaurant normal people cannot afford, Richer People feel compelled to take the group to the fancier Rich People restaurant which makes them feel poor.
When your parents describe themselves as poor, you roll your eyes at them, but they keep saying it anyway. Very loudly! Your younger sister, who is going to be dropped off at her horseback riding camp tomorrow, tells your parents much more directly to stop talking as she heads off to do a TikTok challenge in the men’s varsity gym.
For Richer People, this graduation is part of a Graduation, Reunion & Wedding Season that can get really tiresome. Richer people make a lot of snarky remarks about the valedictorian’s visible thong line and the dandruff on the Dean’s jacket. They have running commentary on the underlying political message of the commencement address and the out-of-season flower arrangements on the dais.
Graduations are a working event for Richer People. They use the very long downtime between the doling out of boring self-serving cliches for networking with other Richer People and texting their assistants back in the office.
Your parents are cynical about the whole Graduation/Homecoming weekend which they see as a fundraising event. Having paid your tuition in full, they won’t be giving any more money for quite a few years. It was hard enough to coordinate everyone’s calendars to be here today.
In her slightly stained Longchamps bag, your mother has packed a comfortable outfit which she changes into the minute the last photo is taken. Your father is already jogging around the reservoir reliving his glory days on the LAX team, though it wasn’t called that then.
They meant to save your Commencement Program but they forgot.
Rich People
Rich People are often disconnected from their children and frequently bail on graduation. Because Rich People see their time as very valuable, they are disincentivized to spend it on children who don’t pay them or add to their status. More than any other group, Rich People leave the raising of their kids to others. That’s what consultants are for.
Spring is a season of Galas and Benefits for Rich People and graduations, with their dog poo in the grass, rashy vinyl chairs, and annoying dandelion stains, are a bottom-tier event.
While poorer parents often see graduations as fraught with hierarchical status displays, Rich People find graduations to be annoyingly egalitarian. Are we actually going to hear everyone’s name read? Is there no better option than tuna fish sandwiches and bags of potato chips under the communal tent?
It is ironic to listen to the President of the College talk about how proud every parent is today as you watch your father (in the front row because he is on the Board of Trustees) trading stocks on his phone as you receive your diploma. But your heart has turned to pewter and by the end of the tedious address, you are dreaming of summer vacation. A friend gets a picture for you.
Your parents, if they bother to attend, arrive at the last possible minute and leave as soon as they can get back to the town car that is noisily idling for them throughout the ceremony. They can’t remember your friends’ names, except that one whose parents they knew in college. It’s hot so they take a Commencement Program to use as a fan. There should be AC at these events.
After your parents head off without saying goodbye, you fall in with a friend’s family who takes you all out to Chipotle and you show them all your favorite spots in the college town you will never see again. As you walk away at the end of the dinner your friend’s mom calls out to you that you forgot your Commencement Program and makes you take it with you.
You send a picture of the Program to your childhood nanny, who cries over how you are now grown up.
Plus! Your Crazy Family Friend Who Is Not Really Your Aunt
She has a purse full of Xanax, Beta-blockers (whatever they are), and dangerously strong THC gummies covered with purse lint bunnies. After the ceremony, she slips you a stack of bills in a slightly creepy strip-club way. It turns out to be a lot of money and you suspect she got the denominations wrong. Should you give it back? Your mother says to forget about it–Your Crazy Family Friend Who Is Not Really Your Aunt owes her.
Your Crazy Family Friend Who Is Not Really Your Aunt has no clear means to support herself, in fact, she may be supporting some of her ex-husbands. Is she rich or poor? Is that dress a trendy vintage-inspired investment piece or an actual dress she has saved from back in the day? Is it possible she stole it….from your mother? It looks familiar.
After ordering a vegan bouillabaisse and/or Blizzard without the mix-ins, Your Crazy Family Friend Who Is Not Really Your Aunt leaves the graduation dinner with someone she met while vaping in the basement of the Arts building during the Commencement Address.
Have fun with your friends, she tells you on the way out. That’s what today is really about. She hands you her copy of the Program with her number so you can call her if you are ever in the city.
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