Graduation Season!

Dear you,

The weather people say the high today is 89 degrees.  Don't believe that.  The feels-like temperature is closer to 105.  The 30A beach scene is sizzling, and not in a sexy way.  The atmosphere is dog-day August hot and most visitors are crankier than usual.  They are huddling together in their crowded, overbooked, condos and perhaps pouting over the disappointing vacation.  Many among the current wave of vacationers are here to celebrate graduations.  Lots of car art in the parking lot.  Lots of congrats to the Brittney's, Bradley's and Bennie's scrawled on windows.  They made it out of whatever school they were in.  The messages seem to suggest nothing but over-ness.  But now and then, I see forward thinking messages.  In my building's parking area, I saw something different; I saw "USC 2026".

This car art predicting a future graduation from an elevated West Coast university is not typical of this zone and its visiting demographics.  Who is this youngster and what made her/him aim for the strange of out there, aim for continuing and not ending? I imagine the story, based on the limited facts I have which are the following:  this grad is traveling with 8 other teenage boy pals, their license plates show they're from Tennessee, and they appear fit, healthy, and happy.  They wear t-shirts testifying to prior membership in wrestling, tennis or soccer teams.  They don't walk around drunk or scream "Yeehaw".  And even if they are loud beneath my feet, it's because that's what happens when you load nine teenage boys into one condo.  Testosterone times nine. Now, back to this USC-bound graduate, his imagined story . . . 

Kirby just graduated from a private high school in the suburbs of Nashville.  His mother is a legal aide and his father works at a local bank.  They, the parents, Lucy and Roberto, moved to Tennessee from San Francisco, CA, right after they were married.  The Bay Area was getting too expensive.  Where to go? The couple was fearless, funny, and trusted the randomness of fate.  So, yeah, they literally threw a dart at a map of the USA and it landed on Tennessee. They thought this was hilarious!

Lucy and Roberto didn't really understand the South and they really hated country music.  But they trusted the fateful dart and jumped! Within a matter of months the couple settled into an affordable first home, landed good jobs, and made new friends.  Two years later, Lucy gave birth to their first and (so far) only child, Kirby.  Kirby was a golden child.  He excelled in school and athletics and managed to rise above local "good old boy" influences.  By the time he was fifteen, he could burn through his Dad's daily copy of The Wall Street Journal in an hour.  He also had an affinity for animals; lost or lonely stray dogs and cats gravitated to Kirby's yard.  They seemed to know love lived there.  These two talents, business smarts and a connection to wild things, defined his professional future.  He would become a venture capitalist whose investments supported animal rights causes and wildlife preservation efforts.  Kirby will be one of the good guys, a VC who creates and saves.  But right now, at this moment in the summer of 2020, he is spending time with his best buddies before flying away, possibly forever.  The guys will miss him. They're already planning the next graduation party when he exits USC (summa cum laude) in 2026.  This time they'll decorate his car window with another prediction:  Stanford 2030, The White House 2050.

That's it.  Predictably corny, I know, but I never claimed to have a literary gift.  I can lay down a coherent journal entry but fiction eludes me. Anyway, indulge me if you will. It isn't often that I imagine sweet back-stories for the visitors I live with.  I usually predict these youngsters will be serial killers or racist mall cops. But there is something different about this specific visitor, this "Kirby" and his best buds. I like them (even if they are rambunctious below my feet). Their existence is very reassuring to me during these turbulent and too hot days.  I don't know why. I don't know them at all, but I trust them with our tomorrows . . . 

Congratulations Kirby.

Happy graduation!

Love,

Joyce