If this was any indication of how my high school graduation would go in two years, I would skip it. Between the stifling press of bodies all around me and the stink of sweaty socks that had been left in the nearby locker rooms to marinate for the last two hundred years, I wouldn't have any teeth left with all the gnashing I was doing. And if that person behind me kicked me one more time, I wouldn't be able to control my actions.

The graduates and their families who sat behind ...