it's 1:13 am, on June 28, 2002 - kyle's graduation.

~

So tonight, Kyle graduated.

We were sitting in the gym where I spent most of my high school life, listening to people I didn't recognise talk about awards I never won, and then and then, Kyle got his diploma. See, okay. Kyle is Will's brother, and we've always had this thing. He's nothing like Will, and he's, he's. I don't know. And I knew him when he was in grade six, for fuck's sake. I've known him as long as his brother and as such we're close. He's part of the Old Gang, so to speak. Him and Will and Cass and Monika, and Bill and Shant, and everyone, like that.

And Carolina is back in town now, and I saw her today for the first time, and now when I see her I remember being in love with her so, so, so hard. But it's not there anymore, so much, necessarily. It is, but like, just a little remnant. Like stuff like that never fades completely, even though it gets to be just a memory.

All of this, and the Meadowridge awards ceremony, and the stuff, lead to this, nostalgia. The validictorian read a very boring speech, and it was all about success and about thanks, and it was all bullshit because no one was listening. If I had said a speech tonight, I would have said a lot of things. Since I couldn't, because I was just one guest among many, I'll tell you instead.

*

"I would like to tell you a little story.

"The first day of school, I remember sitting in a classroom with a woman named Ms. Chernechan, and being scared to go to the bathroom because I didn't know where it was. So we're four years old, sitting in this classroom, and I remember sitting in a circle, and I guess, I really had to go to the bathroom. I have no idea what we were doing in that circle, but there we were, in a second rate portable, little kids in a circle, five of us because the school was that small back then.

"The school was just a grouping of portables on an empty lot. The picnic tables were rotting. There was a tireswing put in when I was in grade one, I think, and everyone called it the coolest thing ever. Our track flooded permanently and we couldn't afford the barkmulch to fix it. When we paved, in asphault, an area to play in, and covered it with a plywood roof, people were so excited just because there was somewhere to play basketball, because before, we had nowhere.

"We used to say the Lord's Prayer when I was in kindergarten, and then the next year, it got taken out of assemblies. We had assemblies every morning of every day I went to that school, where we sang O Canada and people read announcements, and the headmaster said a few words. It was dull and often it was cold as fuck, because back before we had a real school we had to do it all outside, shivering on the front lawn in our blazers and kilts and ties.

"The first boy I kissed was named Jonothan, and it was during reading time, in kindergarten. Back then, there was even a headmistress, and half the fun of returning, all through elementary school, was finding out what new staff there would be, because teachers didn't last. I remember thinking it odd not to have almost complete turnover every year. For us, it was normal.

"I remember, the hallway and library floor was rotten, and frogs would croak under it. I remember in grade five, the classroom steps out of the portable were broken and so we had to lock the door to the outside. I remember real chalkboards.

"And then, it got bigger. We got a real building.

"Meadowridge has been a lot of shitty things, you know. There's been snobbery, and there's been in-fighting. Children are cruel animals. The important things aren't easy, people say, though, so we gotta hope that dealing with all that stuff back then was worth it, all the meanness and the problems.

"See, the portables were some of the most welcoming places ever. It's hard for me to say this, because I look back on the years I spent at Meadowridge, and I hate a lot of them. I hate a lot of things. But the portables were welcoming -- and then as the school got bigger, it tried to stay the same way. It faltered, sure, but it also, eventually, figured things out.

"The story of my years here interests very few people, but me. But I can still go past Eagle Hall, out on 230th street, and think to myself 'that's where the school is'. That spot will be, forever, the place I associate with primary school.

"People are graduating today that I remember back from my childhood. A lot of people have already up and gone; my class is almost all the way through university. Kyle, my friend's brother, is finally graduating, and yet I can still remember getting him in trouble for skipping Sports Day because he was only in grade seven and the rest of us were in grade eight and nine. Kyle is graduating. Kyle is graduating. Kyle is grown."

At this point I probably would have fainted because, Kyle is grown. It's a lot, to try and take that in. It's more than a lot.

But then I would have continued with, "It's bizarre. Because, Kyle still reminds me, some how, of the kid that I hid behind the tennis court with so that we didn't have to do Sports Day. Will and his girlfriend Heather were there too, and we sat and talked and Kyle and I made fun of Will and Heather. Will was my best friend. Will is my best friend. Will, he has a drug problem, has graduated from BCIT, and him and his boyfriend have been living together for almost five months.

"And I'm sure, the same Sports Day, Carolina and Monika, my two other friends, were making jackasses of themselves out on the field, pissing someone off or getting in trouble somewhere. Carolina was the first girl I fell in love with. Carolina moved to London almost two years ago now, and her boyfriend Greg have been together for that long. She worked at an architectural firm and is halfway through a politics degree.

"I remember my locker from ninth grade. Monika is my uncomplicated friend, the one who was always easy to deal with, especially compared to Will, who was Will, and Carolina, who could be stubborn. Monika got back from a four month trip to Africa just last month; Monika is working full time as a care-aid, and studying to get a nursing degree for next year. Monika is single.

"It's bizarre," I'd say. "All these people have grown up, and things haven't stayed the way they were, and now we're all sitting here in our fancy clothes and watching the youngest of the Old Gang graduate. It's amazing, but it's bizarre.

"See, these people, in my head, never went past those grade nine faces; for some of you, I can't see you past twelve years old. No one in this world should ever age and change, but they do and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Kyle is graduating, and good for him, it's amazing. Look at all of you. You're going forward. We are all of us going forward, and that's amazing."

--Of course, that's a lie. Some people aren't moving forward, some people are just standing still in the same place they've been since they were sixteen and driving their sister to and from school in an orange mustang. Some people can't remember why they ever wanted to graduate in the first place. Some people don't have anything beyond that. But that wouldn't be for them, not tonight.--

"To you," I'd say to all those people in the Meadowridge gym, "to those few and far between that even remember what the trolley platform used to look like, all those years ago, to you who can remember Cait, and the Greg Moore that actually went to this school, to you who can remember the Covered Area, and how music class used to be just singing 'the cat came back' in the kindergarten room, when we were in primary school.

"Also, to all of you, who remember the Tuc shop, and when the office was actually classrooms. To those of you who remember science classes in the first labs; the additions one by one. To everyone who remembers four hour exams in social studies even before high school, and weekly stories assigned by Mr. Graveson. To everyone who remembers the Wilms' family, and all of that jazz. All of you who remember the bullshit and the horror and just, all of it.

"And, to all of the Old Gang, who know all the in-jokes and everything else.

"I miss it."

*

That's what I would have said to Kyle's graduating class, and to all the parents, and to all the people who were gathered, and to all the teachers, and to everyone. I hated that school. In a lot of ways, I still hate that school. It's a festering wound of snobbery and conceit, and I couldn't wait to leave, and now that I'm gone I haven't looked back.

But, it's imprinted in me, thicker than blood. So that's what I would have said to everyone gathered in the gym, all the new students and all the new teachers, and everyone who put in half as much time in that hell hole as I did. That is the speech I would have given tonight.

Just, no one would have got it.

*

So also, I briefly entertained Kyle tonight. We did the same old thing; he is reassuringly just like I knew him before. Everyone I know has changed so much, so very, very, very much, and somehow I've missed all of it. Kyle is yet, the same. He is reassuring in that, I can look at him and know in ten years, if I call him up and if we get together, we can flirt and we can fool around a little bit, a baby bit, and it will be just like it was when he was in Grade seven and I wanted to be a dirty cradlerobber. Literally.

Everyone has changed so much. Sometimes I forget, because of the way I do not keep people around more than a few years, but when I see someone I haven't in a long time it's so bizarre to realize that the passage of time has touched everyone equally. I can't handle it well. I can't handle it at all.

Kyle graduated tonight. Everything else is the same.

~

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