So the wee nephew graduated high school. Long story but in the 11th hour of his high school career it is decided that he should be home schooled-via correspondence courses-via a Church. First Heritage of Baptism by Hellfire (where they prefer whites only-but their doors are open to everyone). Or something like that.
The trip out to his graduation was treated with a great deal of casualness. I envisioned 6 kids who never met each other in a small room with a "Happy Graduation" banner under which they would receive their diploma along with Wal*Mart application and be encouraged to throw their ballcaps or golf visors into the air. To the side of the banner there would be a folding table with a "Happy Graduation" cake (white with white frosting) and punch bowl filled with fruit punch with floating orange slices. Within 15 minutes, we're back in my car headed to my sisters house in Crackerville and bing, bam, we're back home within 2 hours.
Instead, it was a large church, with a large parking lot getting filled rapidly. We entered the auditorium for the ceremony and surveyed the near capacity crowd. Lots and lots of middle class rednecks and the self righteous. There weren't 6 kids graduating but something like 30. And all 30 were represented by large families from siblings to close eyed cousins. It was quite the human zoo. The ceremony was a grueling affair loaded with all the fixins. The spirituals, the speeches and of course the keynote speaker.
I think they should have opted for the small room with folding table and maybe a bigger cake. It's a little sad when your keynote speaker is the prison chaplin from Rayford. Aside from the ham handed attempts to scare the kids straight and the obvious strays into subject matters that he would have gotten heckled for (and possibly punched according to my sister) had he made one false move, it was all "you are going to hell...repent now...christian values will save your soul...come to Jesus...God is a vengeful god...Marriage is a man and a woman...Obey God's will...blahblahblah". At one very tense moment, when my eyes, my partner's eyes, my sister's eyes, her partner's eyes, and my brass knuckles were all fixated on the very next word about to come out of his mouth; I discovered something that in a matter of a nano second, reduced him to an absolute joke to me.
I immediately started giggling and looked at my partner who was clearly about to shed his skin. I pointed at the podium and whispered "Don't listen to him...he's wearing cowboy boots." I could barely get the words out without cracking up. If this guy couldn't even take himself seriously enough to wear proper dress shoes to deliver the keynote speech for a graduation ceremony, why should I waste any more of my time caring what he said? Of course, one thing led to another and I began wondering, "exactly what are the proper dress shoes for a polyester suit?" and "how far down the list do you go before you're stuck with the prison chaplain from Rayford or was he at the top?" By the time he shut the fuck up, I could barely contain myself. He went from being annoying to an endless mockery for me. My favorite was picturing him driving his Buick with his freshly ironed Klan hood and robe in the back seat with a "Real Men Love Jesus" sticker just below his memorial sticker to "The Intimidator" on the back window. Unfortunately, I couldn't hang around long enough to follow him to his car to see if he actually had either the Buick, the Klan suit or the Jesus sticker. (The Intimidator sticker is a given). I would still put money on all three though.
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