That One Summer

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I fidgeted in my seat, calming my nervous self. Mrs. Whizz is standing on the far right corner of the stage, calling out names of students to go up the stage to get their diplomas where Mr. Gorman, the principal, is handing them and shaking each student’s hands, congratulating them with a warm smile on his face.

I try to breathe deeply to calm myself. I’m not really good with audience and I have a serious stage fright. Every time I go up a stage, I feel like I want to throw up at that moment. I can’t even look at other people in the eyes for more than three seconds.

The names are called by sections and there are nine sections in our batch this year. Last year, there are only eight sections for the seniors but our batch has more students so they added another section, hence the ninth section. I’m in the sixth section so it gave me more time to prepare myself for going up the stage.

Because I was so busy calming myself, I didn’t notice that it was already our turn to stand up to walk to the side of the stage to form a line. I hastily got up from my seat, still calming myself, and followed my classmates.

“Allie, relax. We can do this. We’re just going to get up that stage, get the diploma from Mr. Gorman, shake his hand, and bow then we’re off to go,” Natasha encouraged. She is a pretty and smart girl who is from the dance team. She’s a really social girl; almost half of the students in our batch are her friends.

I turned around and gave her a thankful smile that came out a grimace. I seriously need to relax.

When my name was called, I did what other students did. I bowed, walked to the center of the stage where the principal is, shake his hand, and took the diploma and I FORGOT TO BOW again in front of the audience. That was how nervous I was.

We weren’t allowed to do stunts when getting our diplomas, even harmless and boring stunts of pumping your fist in the air and shouting things like ‘yeah!’. You heard me. These people here are all party poopers. They are so strict about disciplining children to the next level.

Last year, Jerick, a boisterous former senior, jumped and shouted ‘yeah’ after receiving his diploma. After their graduation ceremony, the teachers didn’t dismiss them instantly. They scolded them and kept on babbling things about being disrespectful and informal.

I really don’t get them. In other countries, it would be normal for young graduates to have that kind of reaction. Why do we need to keep what we feel about ourselves? We live in a democratic country. We have every right to do it. But as they see it, we are like doing something that is jail worthy. Why are most people nowadays paranoid? It doesn’t even make sense. They are so wrapped up in their own bubble that they don’t know anything about the real world. They are still stuck in that certain time that they didn’t see the world changing.

Damn paranoid party poopers.

~

It took another hour to end our graduation ceremony. With the speeches of some government secretary, the valedictorian, and the principal, we were finally dismissed.

Our class vice president, Richard, spread the word in our section during the ceremony that we’ll be taking a class pic on the stage after the graduation ceremony. So after we were dismissed, we headed straight towards the stage and took some pictures. It was really chaotic because the other sections have the same idea. The whole stage was crowded by different sections and for a second I was thinking that the stage couldn’t hold so many people (there are at least 40 students in each section, go figure) and the stage would swallow us alive so after taking some pictures with them, I instantly shot to my feet and got off that poor stage. I wouldn’t want to be in the headlines tomorrow: Stage, Swallows Students Alive.