Congradulations, Dad

This weekend my dad got his Master’s degree from San Jose State. I wish I could say that my father’s graduation was an exciting and inspiring affair. Don’t get me wrong – the fact that he was graduating was both exciting and inspiring; it’s just that the ceremony itself was one of the worst drudgeries I’ve had to endure in a long time. My three-year-old nephew was there, and he was bouncing out of his seat. Luckily we had the great fortune of being in a location where small planes must pass as they land at the nearby airport, or I expect his head would have exploded about a third of the way through the ceremony.

The biggest ass-number (as in something that numbs your ass, not a number comprised of asses) of the event was the speech by Mike Honda, a member of the California legislature who had graduated from the same university. I have to admit that I liked what he was saying much of the time, but he basically made us sit through three speeches. The first was about his family’s experience in the interment camps during WWII, which somehow segued into his experiences a the University surrounded by political and artistic visionaries and finally wound up with a speech about keeping the civil liberties that were built into the US Constitution by the Founders intact. Each one of these individually would have been very interesting, but the confluence of all three made for one long speech.

One of the problems with boring a stadium full of people is that it’s not like the old days where there was nothing else to do unless you had the prescience to bring a book. Everyone has a cell phone these days, and every time the ceremony started to drag you had 2,000 people jumping on their phones and calling not only their friends, but also the graduates, so there was a cacophony of conversations something like this: “No, no, we came in the west entrance! Where are you? Bill is in the fourth row, can you see him? Hold on, I’ll call him and tell him to wave at you!” Once the ceremony was over, it was almost difficult to express our excitement through the exhaustion when we finally were able to join the line slowly stuttering down to the field toward the graduates.

As a family we couldn’t be prouder of him, although probably only my mom knows just how much effort and sacrifice he’s been pouring into this. Along with the other things he learned, his proficiency with the computer has increased, and he’d been thinking for a while that he’d like to get a laptop. My mom had the idea of buying him one for his graduation, but she wanted it to be a surprise. It’s probably best that she was in charge of organizing the event besides the actual technical details of setting up the new computer, which of course fell to me, because I am horrible at keeping secrets, and her plan worked too well for me. Every time he brought it up she would say, “Oh, what would you do with a laptop? We have a desktop that works fine! You don’t need a laptop.” I would probably have broken down and somehow let him know, because I’m a wuss like that. He was definitely genuinely surprised, though, when we gave it to him after the graduation ceremony, with the whole family sitting around the dinner table.

I am so proud of my father. That he was able to go back to school after all these years and get this degree means so much to me. He is the smartest, wisest, kindest, and most knowledgeable man I know, and I’m proud to be his son, and although I don’t feel that I can ever truly live up to his example, it’s something I strive for. As a matter of fact, the only complaint I can think of is that he has a compulsion to take the devil’s advocate side of almost any conversation, which I unfortunately inherit. It comes in very handy for analyzing problems, but if you’ve ever come home from a hard day at work and just wanted to complain to let off some steam, you can see where it could cause problems. He impressed upon me early in life the value of learning, and that more than anything else has shaped the course of my life. I would not be as successful in my career today if I had not been instilled with an insatiable desire to learn everything there is to know, in part because it seemed like he knew something about everything. Now he’s getting his degree, and part of me swells to think that now the world knows what I know, and is giving him some recognition in a life as the quintessential educator, and the best teacher I’ve ever had (literally – I had him as a teacher for fourth and fifth grade). The university, of course, isn’t taking all that into account when they give him this award, but to me any recognition he receives is back pay for a life of service. I’m proud to lift you up to the world and pronounce for anyone who wants to hear that “This is my father, with whom I am well pleased” -- If you’ll allow the sacrilegious paraphrase.

Way to go, Dad.