Free at Last : Graduation Day: A Special Summer Rite of Passage

“There are two places in life where time drags on -- prison and high school. “

--Excerpt from student graduation address

*

At long, long last, they were outta there. Every last one of them.

At 8:34 p.m. Tuesday, on a football field flooded with light, the last of 640 graduating seniors from Van Nuys High School pranced past the principal’s podium to a thunderous student ovation--one that seemed to release three long years of emotional and intellectual tension.

On cue, family members stormed the field like a victorious World Soccer Cup crowd. Flashbulbs flashed. Proud fathers hugged their daughters. Friends gripped one another in a prolonged embrace they would remember 20 years from this night. Even the cool kids cried.

For tens of thousands of teen-agers across Los Angeles, the last week of June signifies one special summer’s rite of passage, life’s first real end zone, a time when they can spike the ball, do the dance--like that breathless kick-off returner who just dodged a slew of diving tacklers on a successful 100-yard run.

Graduation Day. So long to Hip Hop Hooray High School.

For many, this ceremony with its mortarboards flying through the air like so many scattering birds, is a last farewell to the freedom of childhood.

Some will move on to the pressure cooker of university life. Others will join the military or begin a demanding full-time job that will make those uneasy high school years--the ugly rumors, bullet-proof cliques and water-torture boredom--a never-to-be-lived-again daydream.

Glory Days.

This, then, is the graduation story of an average San Fernando Valley high school and two typical teens. Christina von der Ohe, a magnet student from West Los Angeles and one of two school valedictorians who “just began to think deep thoughts a year ago,” will attend UC San Diego this fall.

Not so for Alfonso Medrano. A towering youth with two gold-capped teeth and an easy smile, he wants to attend mechanic school. For now, though, he’ll continue his job as a grocery store bag boy.

Said Medrano: “I’ll make it. But first, I’ve just got to figure a few things out for myself.”

*

“Life would not have changed to any extremes if we never met.”

--Signature from Van Nuys high school yearbook

*

They are the masters of their own tiny universe. The smart kids. The ones people tried to cheat from. A clique of borderline-genius teens who decided to blow off a morning of classes to shoot some pool.

At a Ventura boulevard pool hall, they knocked about the brightly colored balls like absent-minded professors. After all, this was an odd place for Christina van der Ohe and her friends to be at this hour.

But somehow, it felt good. It felt free. Gone were the locked gates of their high school campus, the hall passes and cartons of warm milk, the Pavlovian bells telling them when to come and go. And, perhaps most of all, gone now was the irksome, sandpaper voice of Mr. Rossini--the assistant principal with his endlessly blaring bullhorn.

Gone is the frustration of being called on the carpet--like the day Christina’s friend Neil got sent to the office just for telling an assistant principal that his fly was down.

If Christina has a pet peeve, it’s worthless classes, the feeling you know more than your own teachers. Go ahead, call her Harvard or Goldilocks. But don’t call her Little Miss Innocent.

So what if she takes ballet, that she’s a former cheerleader? She’s open with her parents. Once, she even made the Ann Landers column when she told her Mom she was curious about smoking pot.

Well, Mom wrote Ann and suddenly there’s this screeching headline reading something like “Ballet dancer reaches for a bong hit.” How embarrassing.

Christina even had a few beers in a hotel room on Prom Night. She and her friends laughed and laughed and tried to do calculus in their heads. Then, after her date helped carry her to the lobby, her Mom picked her up at 4 a.m.

Christina is the eldest of three girls. Now that she’s old enough to think for herself, she has begun to question what she calls the brainwashing of her parents, their would-be guidance to the way they see the world.

“I don’t know,” she says, lining up a side-pocket shot. “I’m just afraid to be bored. I think that’s the biggest crime you can commit.”

Lately, Christina has been hanging out with this older guy in her neighborhood. He looks like a stoner, but he’s not. He’s 19 and he’s really smart and he’s not as innocent as the rest of her friends.

He has taught her to examine things, listen to new music. She talks with her friends about sex but hasn’t tried it yet. She’s kissed him, though.

Once, she wanted to be a veterinarian. Now she thinks that it’s bad to keep animals as pets, to establish ourselves as the lords of their lives. Now, Christina just wants to have adventure.

Not long ago, Christina went back for a junior high school reunion and broke the nice girl image of herself. She dyed her hair and dressed real punker-like with fishnet stockings.

“The kids liked it,” she recalls. “But the teachers didn’t know what to make of it. It was a good learning experience.”

*

“In 10 years you’ll be pregnant with your fifth child and will be taking care of your alcoholic husband. “

--Yearbook inscription

*

Alfonzo Medrano looked about the sea of purple graduation uniforms and smiled a sad smile. Sure, he had made it. But a lot of friends had fallen by the wayside, leaving school for a street corner life of yelling “Black and white!” to warn of each approaching cop.

So, this graduation night was for himself, his proud mother. But it was also for the homies.

For Medrano, whose friends call him Pancho, Van Nuys had been a school of hard knocks. Both his older brothers had been gang members. Not him, though. But what do you do if all your childhood friends had turned into gang-bangers?

For this young Latino in baggy clothes and a brush-cut haircut, the answer was to stop by the barrio each day to encourage the boys to go back to school. He even took one kid, a freshman named Ricky, under his arm.

He drove Ricky to school each day, just to be sure he made it. Drove him home too. Helped him with his homework.

At 13, Pancho started working in the Chinese restaurant where his father was a cook. He wanted to make enough money to help his parents and brothers. That made school harder.

Now, he listens silently as other students talk about college and the future. There’s no money for that. Maybe, though, if he saves enough from his $5.25 job bagging groceries, he can save enough to attend mechanics school.

Then he can work on engines. That’s what he really wants to do.

“I take things one day at a time--how else can you do things?” he says. “I mean, a gangbanger can drive by and kill me tomorrow. So, what’s all this worrying about the future going to do?”

For the week before graduation, Pancho and his friends sat under the tree on campus where the Latinos routinely gathered and discussed the future.

Pancho isn’t going on the senior cruise from Catalina to Mexico. Heck, the grocery store almost didn’t give him the day off for his graduation. He almost had to beg them to get it off.

One day, a teacher had asked Pancho to join student council, saying they needed more Latino members. So Pancho went to work. He organized a peace mural in the boys restroom, got himself voted best new student council member.

That makes him proud. But there’s one missed opportunity that makes him sad. At 6 foot, 3 inches and 250 pounds, Pancho wanted to play football his senior year.

But when the coach changed practices to nights, he asked what working kids were supposed to do. The coach’s answer left a baffling question mark to his high school days, a dream of what could have been.

“Sometimes,” he told the boy indifferently, “you just have to make sacrifices to play high school sports.”

*

“She said ‘Hello’ to me! After three years of silence, the girl of my dreams finally says , ‘Hi.’ But wait, it’s too late now.”

--Overheard on graduation night

*

The student band played the monotonous Pomp and Circumstance theme like a Holiday Inn band--one beat too slowly--as The Graduates paraded stiffly, two-by-two around the perimeter of the field.

Meanwhile, Moms took pictures, those faraway snapshots where everything will be indistinguishable when developed later. Dads wielded video cameras.

The procession suggested the ethnic diversity of this school: 45% Latino, 22% Asian, 25% white and 5% black. And imagine this--for once, each and every one of these kids was smiling.

Earlier, students had passed through security measures more appropriate for a Guns ‘N Roses concert. Dumpsters blocked the outdoor cafeteria entrance as Mr. Rossini yelled on his megaphone: “Student! Do not enter there!”

At the door, teachers frisked students. They weren’t looking for guns and knives, but balloons, car keys, beach balls, Teddy Bears, purses, cameras, condoms, tampons--anything that could be used to disrupt the ceremony.

Years ago, students had rubbed suntan lotion on their hands for the Official Graduation Handshake and, well, the principal didn’t enjoy the night very much, not very much at all.

As usual, the gaggles of teens arrived at school at 5 p.m.--90 minutes before the ceremony was to begin. Like at some outdoor dance, they stood and they stood, adjusting tassels, the most popular girls running here and there.

They all knew their parts. That morning, after he was booed as he took to the podium, Mr. Rossini took them through the steps of the event, barking that, if need be, they were going to stay there all day until they got the spacing right between students.

So now these kids were on auto-drive. They paraded, took their seats and listened to countless speeches. At times throughout the two-hour-plus ceremony, someone inflated a beach ball on the infield, which got punched around until some teacher took it away.

Always, there was a boo from the parents when that happened.

By dark, all the teachers had said their goodbys, the yearbooks had all been signed with all-too-profound scrawlings. Together, these teens were ready to leave this place, this time in their lives.

But moments before the toss of the mortarboards, a strange thing happened: There it was, the far-off ringing of a bell, the ring that once had told them to get to class or rush to their lockers.

Now, though, the bell meant nothing. It rang and rang and nobody listened.

They had truly graduated, after all.