Of Academics and Airhorns

The choir of a dozen or so students is just finishing up the first verse of a heartfelt, if slightly tremulous rendition of "Bridge Over Troubled Water." The sound system is still working well, and the weather has been unusually cooperative with the graduation 2011 agenda.  A few hundred students sit facing the stage, flanked by educators, families and friend in the football stands to the rear.  Smooth sailing. 

Enter the beach balls.  One of the graduates near the back smuggled one in her/his robes, inflates it, and begins passing it around.  A teacher sitting behind me murmurs, "and here we go!"  A few giggles escape the stands as a palpable tension descends over the proceedings.

All eyes are on Ms. Habermas, the quasi-autocratic building administrator whose policies and practices have regimented the school, agitating some in the process.  She glowers, hawk-like, weighing a course of action.  Only a few seconds go by before she acts: she shoots out of her seat, strides a good 15-20 steps off the stage, toward the center of the graduates, and grabs the beach ball, returning to stage.  She tosses the ball lightly into the air and smacks it, with the decisiveness of an experienced volleyball player, over the curtains to the rear of the stage and out of sight.

Boos erupt from across the audience - noisy, extended boos of the sort usually reserved for vaudeville evildoers.  Things settle down for the time, and the ceremony continues.