Drive-By Graduation

Although America was designed as an alternative to the stuffy hierarchical bureaucracies from which its inventors originally set sail, it has spent the last two centuries rendering every last deed and word as the most important and stately thing ever. For something which regards itself as better than monarchy, we sure seem to spend a lot of time and energy on approximating all the trappings right down to the last, most pointlessly baroque detail. There's a ceremony for everything, because everyone gets to be king for a day, or so the promise would have it. The main features of my own departure from my English secondary school were, for example, that I was present at the school for a period of time, and then I was absent from the school for the period which followed, and I never went back and that was that. Here there's a ceremony involving caps, gowns, awards, speeches and so on. I've been to one American high school graduation ceremony. It lasted about three hours, comprising a line of kids in gowns marching across a stage punctuated by the worst motivational speeches you've ever heard, material which could have been written for William Shatner at the height of his gestural powers.

As these young people go boldly into the future whence destiny shalt be their red carpet and the fame we see snatched from the jaws of failure here today in this most hallowed space blah blah blah...

Thankfully, every cloud has a silver lining and it seems that the global pandemic is no exception, and so are we invited to a drive-by graduation. Our boy's cousin has finished school this year. We'll put on our masks, drive past his house, wave, call out well done, and his mother will hand us cup cakes through the car window.

That's the plan.

We pull up to the house and notice the personalised license plate of the vehicle in front. 'That's Byron,' I say, surprised. 'I didn't think he would come. In fact I guess he's leaving already.'

We watch the truck drive away as we park in the space it has vacated. Byron underwent serious eye-surgery this weekend, and Bess suggests he was probably driven here by one of his friends. She glances across to the lawn of the house upon which twenty or thirty unmasked persons are gathered. 'I don't think he was too happy about this gathering. He's been pretty keen about sticking to the lockdown.'

This doesn't sound like Byron, a man rarely seen without an entourage of fellow barbecue enthusiasts, but then he's full of surprises and I'm sure the surgery will have had a sobering effect.

'I thought this was a drive-by.'

'Me too,' says Bess, and we get out of the car, donning our masks.

The graduate is with his friends in a group. I still think of him as a little ginger kid with piercing eyes, but he's taller than I am and has somehow come to resemble a young, muscular Alan Partridge. His friends look as though they should be fooling around on yachts. His mother comes over and herds us towards the table with the cupcakes. I take one with soft green icing tasting like nothing found in nature, the sort which is actually quite nice every once in a while.

No-one is wearing a mask.

We do the elbow bump greeting with the graduate's older brother, who now resembles Rick Moranis. Bess jokes that I'm enjoying the pandemic because it means I'm no longer obliged to hug complete strangers, which is true. I still don't like the elbow bump though. It replaces handshakes and other forms of physical contact which I never saw as necessary in the first place.

We congratulate the graduate for having lived to the age at which he's no longer required to attend high school. He seems happy. He has plans to become a veterinarian, or something in that direction.

'You remember Jeff?' my wife suggests.

I sort of do, and Jeff grins, and his great big hand sails towards mine like a side of ham. Contact is made and we shake unnecessarily.

I hear myself observing that the term drive-by made me think of Boyz n the Hood, but it's the wrong crowd for such references. 'We're the only people wearing masks,' I say to Bess.

'I know. We'll go in a minute.'

I meet a few more people I've met before but don't remember, and then we shuffle back to the car and head home. As we leave, I gaze at them all stood around on the lawn and wonder if this has been some kind of low-level protest at having to wear a mask, inspired by those fucknuggets in the news who've decided that it somehow violates their constitutional rights. None of them exactly look like Trumpanzees, but then they're all white Caucasian, all wealthy, all well-dressed in a city with a 62% Latin or Hispanic populace.

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell.

I try not to think about it.