Life's a Stitch

File this one in you can teach an old dog new tricks. This is a Flickr badge of our past week, which included both high school and undergrad commencements, although one was conspicuously sans graduate. Click on one of the wee tiny pictures and get an enlargement. Some of what you'll find:

1. Close but no cigar – see the blue gown on the hanger? That's as close as it got to crossing the stage. Yes, the high schooler did graduate, but was stuck on set, acting in a commercial, and didn't make it back on time to formally receive the diploma. The parents were present and crushed, the graduate seems unscathed.

2. Promming bloggers or would that be blogging prommers? Here in North Vancouver, parents attend the prom with their students, then the kids go off for aftergrad parties. That's 5 and a Beagle with me.

3. The head bonk, formally known as the ceremonial tap. This was new to me:
"A hold-over from the knighting ceremony where the monarch taps the
prospective knight on the shoulder and dubs him "Sir," tapping is a
convocation tradition started in Oxford and Cambridge. It is a symbolic
act–a recognition by the learned gentry that the student has passed
certain hurdles and can now be considered a scholar. Only undergraduates get tapped by the Chancellor. Master's and PhDs
were already admitted to the society of scholars when they received
their undergraduate degrees, so they do not kneel.
4. What a graduate's mom carries in her purse: a camera; an umbrella, it's BC after all; forms and passes – regalia, parking, admission; nine Kleenex.

Enough of the chatter, here are the pictures:

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