#34 Graduation.

There is only one thing that separates playing for graduation from playing for homecoming: we're sitting down, and we're indoors. (And you thought musicians could count.) Seriously, this is something we don't enjoy any more than the graduates or the audience.
Wait, isn't that everybody?
And why do we say "Happy Graduation" anyway?
Graduation (more formally called "Commencement," if you're named Chad and go to Vanderbilt University) is a ceremony. Now, saying "Happy Birthday," that makes sense. I mean, after all, on you're birthday you're officially considered a year older, and that depresses sensible people who get depressed over stuff like that, so we thought we'd just say "Happy Birthday" and hope that for some reason that makes you happy. Yeah, we don't know you well enough and/or were too cheap to get you a card or a present, and we don't really care if you're happy on any other day of the year.
Except graduation. We hope you enjoy that.
For real? Why is graduation the only ceremony that we do this? You'll never hear anybody say "Happy Ordination," but then again, most people preach a sermon for their ordination, and of course it's not their first sermon or how did they get ordained in the first place? This is different. You only have one graduation.
Actually, some people have two.
Or three.
But that's less than the number of sermons you preach to get ordained.
What about...uh...are graduations and ordinations the only two ceremonies out there that have actual names?
Let's talk some more about graduations...
A graduation is when you go sit in a really really really hot gym and wait twenty minutes before you start to hear boring music that you hear at EVERY graduation. Then a bunch of people you don't know start to walk in and can't seem to walk in time to the music. They probably don't even hear it. After they take twenty minutes walking to the front of the gym (why can't they enter from that side, anyway?) they all sit down and you hear a boring speech from the superintendent and/or principal. Then, you hear boring speeches by two of the students that you don't know, but they're smart and usually keep it short. How do we know they're smart?
What, did you think they'd get stupid people to do the speeches?
Then, we watch for fifteen minutes to three hours, depending on the number of students, while they walk across the stage getting diplomas, and in some cases there isn't even a diploma in that weird leather-looking case thing, but I can't remember why, because this is the time of year about as far away from a graduation in the past or future as you can get.
After all that, they leave, which is the best part, because that's when you get to hear music you've never heard before. Unless you went to the graduation last year. But you've forgotten it. Everyone has a different recession song, none of which have anything to do with the recession. That would be too depressing. Our song sounds something like Star Wars/Creatures of the Night (Mannheim Steamroller version)/Chopin funeral march/some Toreador Song thrown in the middle. (What? You've never the Toreador Song? You need to go to more operas.)
This is all very depressing. That's why we say "Happy Graduation," because we know you won't like it.
Homeschool graduations are only slightly different.
You didn't even know homeschoolers had graduations, did you?
Neither did I, until I went to one.
There are two basic reasons homeschoolers have graduations. First, to show that we can compete with anything the public school throws out. Second, so that the parents can say, "Come see our children! This is the one time of year they actually come out! They really do exist!"
Has this been a long post to you? I have to keep you reading until a graduation. Unless you're going to a December graduation. Good luck connecting this with being a band teacher.