At this time in America, we are entering a season where a fundamental right of passage is occurring all across this great land of ours.

I am speaking, of course, of the end of the school year.

It used to be that we would only celebrate certain events at the end of the instruction cycle. Things like High School and College graduations. Milestones in any young person’s life. And rightly so. I mean, if you survived and passed 4 years of having half trivia and half book learning and half semi-useful life skills (you can see I really did well in math class here) being shoved into your blunt skull, all passed on to you by people who are so fed up with the school system, kids and homework in general, that they are drinking Malox directly from the bottle, you deserve to have a ceremony celebrating your completion/survival from the educational system from Hell.

Oh, and let us not forget college. That extraordinary institution that charges you up the butt for a bunch of crap you will also never use. Where students are taught to write valuable papers entitled “Why White Guys Can’t Jump,” “Why Isn’t America A Communist Utopia like they are in Cuba or North Korea” and my personal favorite: “Why You Shouldn’t Have To Tell The Truth If It Hurts Somebody’s Feelings.” Sports programs where mediocre male athletes who couldn’t make it on the men’s team become champions of Women’s College Sports. A place where people, because you can’t say men and women anymore, go to get valuable degrees like “Gender Studies.” “Underwater Basket Weaving” is when they parlay the knowledge they have obtained in these “High Demand” degrees to become “productive” members of Congress.

As much as these “useful” institutions of education, they bring a lot to the young minds of mush we call children. I want to talk about another end-of-the-school-year event that I recently attended this past week. The funny thing was, it wasn’t a graduation, per se, although it could have been run as one.

No, this was an 8^th-grade end-of-the-year award ceremony.

If you have never attended an 8^th-grade award ceremony, think of it as attending the Oscars in Hollywood but with brighter people.

So, we are waiting in line with the rest of the parents just to get into the gym. Luckily, we got there early, and there were about 20 people at the door when they opened up for “festival seating” in the gym. We finally get inside and rush to find a seat on one of the lower benches so we don’t have to climb very far up the steep sides of the school’s bleachers that were used as a training facility for people who want to climb Mt. Everest.

Suppose you have ever sat on one of those wooden bleacher seats. In that case, you will come to the quick conclusion that the seating for this venue was designed by the same folks who gave us The Spanish Inquisition. Because I was sitting there for a grand total of 45 seconds, and my ass started to hurt. In addition, there is no leg room to stretch your legs, so you are stuck there, shoulder to shoulder with people whom you don’t know, in a cramped, sitting up straight with no back support in an almost upright fetal position and your ass after hurting then goes numb.

Here I am in ass-numbing agony, and I look down onto the gym floor, and there are chairs set up for the deaf parents of the students and the interpreter. Now, I’m glad they have someone there for these parents so they can see. Notice I didn’t say hear, but they could see what awards their kids get. But my question is this: Why do they have to sit on chairs at the front? Can’t they sit in the bleachers like the rest of us? It’s just some person making hand signals to tell them what the award was to which kid. They can see that from the bleachers, too. But no! They got chairs with backs and put them where they could stretch their legs.

How fair is that?

But I digress.

When you go to an awards ceremony, people usually sit in chairs with their backs on them and at least a little legroom. (This is reminiscent of what flying used to be like, but again, I digress.) You look up or down, depending on how high up you are in the bleachers, at the stage, and you see only a few recipients on a dais of sorts or set apart, waiting to be called up. They get their award for things they actually did, everybody in the audience does a “Golf Clap,” and after about 20 minutes, you leave and go home. No fuss. No Muss. And your ass isn’t numb.

Now, it is so much different. Because when I went to this 8^th-grade ceremony, every 8^th-grader was there to get an award. I kid you not. If you were a prepubescent kid with a couple of zits and a pulse, you were there to get an award. In fact, in looking over the program, there were 22 different categories where a kid could win something.

For example: “Pathway to Bilitercy” Is an award given to a student who becomes proficient enough in another language to order off the menu at Del Taco.

Or how about an award for “Art”? It is an award given to the student who can color between the lines (at least 30% of the time).

Then, there is the “Presidential Award,” given to the student who can tell you who the President of the United States is without looking it up on Google.

And finally, there was “School Plus 2.” This accolade was for those special kids who took 4 years instead of 2 years to graduate from Junior High. Can we say “Participation Trophy” here?

I would have to say there were about 200 8^th-grade kids getting awards. And did these kids have to sit in bleachers like the rest of us? Oh No! These little bastions of America’s future get to sit in chairs with backs on them and have ample leg room. Something is seriously wrong here. We brought them into the world. We go to work. We pay the bills. We pay for the food these never-full minions can never get enough of. We buy their clothes, and they have the nerve to grow out of them in a week, so we are forced to do it all over again. We test the limits of our sanity by doing THEIR science projects on an assigned topic that nobody gives a crap about, and WE have to sit in the cramped bleachers with no legroom and numbed asses?

Something is seriously wrong with our educational system.

Name after name was called along with whatever award the kid/future felon/the guy who will eventually ask you, “Do you want fries with that” got. Occasionally, you’d hear a parent whoop it up after hearing their kid’s name called. And rightly so. I get it. They are proud their kid finally got awarded a piece of paper they can hang on their family’s refrigerator at home.

 But the one that got me was this. I heard a kid’s name called, and down in the Deaf Section, a father stood up at that very moment, and even though he couldn’t hear his child’s name called, he saw his daughter receive an award. This man stood up, looked at her, and tenderly blew her a kiss. The award winner in question, seeing her father, smiled with this look of love and incredible pride of seeing her father, blew him back a kiss, and then the father sat down.

And that’s when it hit me.

See, going to these back-breaking, leg-cramping, ass-numbing ceremonies aren’t always about the awards, per se. It is about us as parents being there for our kids. It’s about celebrating the challenges our children have overcome to get where they are today. It is about knowing we love and support our kids and want the best for them.

So yeah, I will attend more of these ceremonies for my kids, grandkids, and even my great-grandkids. And even if they win an award in an off-topic like they do in the Oscars (Best use of a crayon in a documentary), I will be there to cheer them on from my sore back, leg cramping, ass numbing seat in the bleachers. (Unless next time I can fake being deaf and get better seating).

I now return you to your regularly scheduled life…already in progress.