November 23, 1999.

Something very strange happened to me last night.

I was sitting in Convocation Hall, graduating & chatting with the guy next to me (a fellow survivor of that horrid 18^th century lit course last year) when I realized that the guy next to him was the boy I'd had a crush on in 5^th grade.

I'm not making this up. Just imagine how we felt.

So I got to thinking about the whole thing, how I'd been convinced at the time that I was utterly & completely in love with this other 10 year old, just because he happened to be nice & smart & enjoyed hanging out with me. He was a goofy kid, skinny as hell & delicate as china. He wore tinted glasses & had traveled to every continent with his parents. And, as I mentioned, he was nice to me. My strangeness has always been dominant, and I was happy for whatever happiness I could accumulate socially even at that age.

Last year I heard through St. Stephen that they were in the same program. At the time, I just chalked it up to the Improbability Field surrounding my life. But is it really a coincidence that two kids from the "enhanced" program would end up on the same grad program of a nearby university, one leaving magna and the other just cum laude? Or that the one with unadjective'd distinction should be the one who dropped out of the program in 6^th grade for a more normal life? Not that it seems to have done me all that much good in the end, all that forced normality.

But still.

I also got to thinking that of all my improbable pre-adolescent crushes, he was the one most like my current sweetie. And like the Boy, he's turned out very cool & attractive from a low-profile geeky boyhood. They say that your sexual preferences are formed in the first 5 years of your life. This may be pushing it.

So yeah, if you didn't gather it from the previous section, I graduated (with distinction) yesterday evening. It was a very odd night. Going in during the afternoon, I looked forward to a boring afternoon followed by a tedious evening in a stuffy hall. But Fortuna was trying to entertain me a bit. I ran into an old old friend (like, since we were 5 years old & in Sunday School friend) who's doing her masters at the university. I had known about her activities through the mom tribal drums, but this was the first time we've seen each other in years - plenty long enough for a lot of awkwardness to flower. But it was nice.

We talked about all the typical things: professors, commuting into the city from B-ton, being grown up & living with our parents, our bratty younger siblings and what mutual friends have been doing. I took her to tea & showed off some of my large body of now-useless campus knowledge. It was a very reassuring chat, very comfortable in a weird sort of way...it felt real in some indefinable way, and it made me feel like I haven't had a "real" conversation in a long time. But since I don't exactly know what I mean by that, I think we can let it pass for now.

And then I rented a gown & my degree was conferred upon my by medieval oath of fealty.

Oh, I'm sure most people feel thoroughly modern & grown up whilst convocating, but I'm taking European history right now & it's made a strong impression on me. And I love drama - eat it up with a spoon - so I was more than pleased to approach the President of the university with the hood draped over my wrists, my hands prayerfully folded & my head humbly lowered as I knelt before him to have my degree conferred.

I just wish there was an equivalent to the oil Agamemnon was anointed with during his ordination - a Convocism, if you will. And maybe a parchment diploma, with real ink calligraphy & a Latin incorruption. For what I pay in fees, I think it's only proper...

Horrid demon children ran rampant today, possessing the bodies of my sweet grade sixes with cruel abandon. When I quietly recommended to one boy that he return to his work rather than hang around the back of the class with another boy, the one at the back snarled, "why do you have to be here?" A bunch of girls cut me dead (i.e. were just insulting enough to make a point without being overt about it)...and they're just old enough to know how to do it. Ouch ouch ouch.

But the afternoon was a bit better. The kid I walked with was alluding to the incident in class, to the scandalized "oohs" of the other boys. As if I had designs on an 11 year old. A bit later on they became obsessed with each other's weight, and in the course of the discussion one kid said to me, "I bet I weigh more than you." That, I rather doubt. But flattering nonetheless. And kind of cute...which is, of course, the saving grace of the young hell-spawn.