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2006-06-16 - 12:24 a.m.

The students are gone from the campus, the graduates have graduated, and by tomorrow afternoon, the teachers will be gone, too. I've "hung up my ties", not likely to be worn until next September (not that I don't like wearing them, but I do enjoy the chance to be strictly "shorts and t-shirts" for a while).

The kids, though, were a great disappointment to me at graduation. I guess I shouldn't expect much...or anything, since I wasn't expecting much in the first place. Just where is the point where they cross over from a child who sincerely likes you for yourself, to a cynical adolescent who determines only whether you belong on their "kiss up" list?

According to my experience and reckoning, fifth grade is the last full sweet, innocent child year and the real point of no return seems to be the spring break of sixth grade, which is when they've received their acceptance to prep school and feel they no longer need anybody for anything. As if getting into the right junior high is life's big accomplishment! There seems to be an attitude of "I'm going off to do incredible things, while you guys are really nothing but loser grade school teachers or whatever it is that you are, and I was wondering, just how little money DO you make, anyway?"

Not every graduate is this way, of course, there do sometimes remain one or two sincerely sweet ones, and then there are those rejecting ones who, after swimming for a while in the big bad shark-infested ocean of their chosen prep school, come back into your open arms, aching and nostalgic for a little bit of that old time succor and security. But for the time being, their attitude is not only "What have you done for me, lately?", but "What can you possibly do for me, now?" and I guess I fail in both counts.

I admit that for the most part, I had not been too involved with this particular graduating bunch. I had not chaperoned any of their trips, they hadn't really done anything public of note such as performed in any appealing plays or participated in any poetry readings and the like that I would have gone to see and afterwards discussed with them, and this year, none of them had come to see me to take advantage of any particular expertise I had that they wanted to use in any of their debates. So many of the normal opportunities for interaction never occurred.

I did judge their science fair, which involved conversations and interviews with the participants, not just passively making rulings from on high, but the fair was now long over, all the ribbons had been given out, and so my importance as a figure to briefly kiss up to in that regard was now non-existent.

I also did weekly serve on their lunch recess duty, but that is more of a "policeman" role, not likely to create warm feelings (even though I am a compassionate and more liberal monitor, not given to strict rules and harsh, punitive corrections); but as a recognizable face, this kept me from being a total stranger, though in their view, I guess, not much distinguishable from one of the maintenance crew mowing the lawn or pruning the trees.

There was one boy, though, who, when he was younger, would run over and give me a hug whenever he saw me, or would wave frantically at me from the car whenever I saw him arriving or leaving. Also, his mother told me that he had already decided that for his graduation trip (which they give to their kids as a gift), unlike his sister who had gone to Paris, he wanted to go to Australia, because my lectures had inspired in him a love for and curiosity about that country.

That went on for many years, but then suddenly, on a dime, he turned stand-offish and I became a non-entity, even though for my part, I continued to say 'hi' to him and attempted to speak to him whenever I saw him. But then he became a trouble-maker, getting into fights (which is very rare at this school), and turned himself into an unpopular thug. Even so, I did like his mother, who had come to know me earlier because her daughter, quite a bit older than the boy, liked me a lot, too. Despite the boy's current incarnation as a thug, I was looking forward to seeing the family at graduation and giving my sincere congratulations. I could bet my life savings that he no longer wanted to go to Australia, but I hoped that my joking mention of it might cause some of his earlier sweetness to peek through at the end. However, the second the ceremony was over, they high-tailed it out of there, did not stay for the reception and so I never got to say a word to them.

While that disappointed me, I was actually angered by one of the girls. This girl was a foreign student from Austria who had had visa problems about which she had been attempting to get somebody at the school to help her, but nobody understood what she was talking about or what the situation was, as it was nothing the school had ever had to deal with before. Finally, in desperation, she discussed her situation with the school nurse, who understood German, the language the girl spoke. The school nurse brought the girl and her problems up to me, knowing that I was someone who would figure it all out and help the girl.

After they explained the issue to me, I did some research and found out that because the 9/11 terrorists had been students in a flying school, laws had been changed and foreign students of any nature no longer had carte blanche in the U.S., but had to be carefully screened and tracked by Homeland Security. Schools admitting foreign students (which we did not have a program of doing, but had accepted this one particular student as a favor) had to become licensed and approved by Homeland Security (something we didn't even know we had to do), and an official at the school was responsible for reporting the presence and progress of their foreign students via a computerized Homeland Security registration and reporting system that ties directly into computers accessed by customs officials at our borders.

In what ended up being a several-month-long process, entirely on my own (and NONE of this was relative to my job at the school), I got the school Homeland Security licensed for admitting foreign students and I became the official authorized to access the Homeland Security student reporting and tracking database. I was able to get a student visa issued to this girl with our school as the sponsor, which allowed her to stay in this country more than three months and to travel back and forth across the border whenever she wanted.

I had lots of problems working with this computerized Homeland Security system, which was still so new that they had lots of bugs to work out, plus the system was anything but user friendly and intuitive. And this was working with a federal agency with lots of rules and ultimate power, like working with the IRS, and there seemed to be constant glitches and heart-breaking difficulties. Last summer, the family called me up and asked me to issue travel documents for her because she wanted to go on a trip to Mexico, and when I attempted to do so, I discovered that the system had completely deleted her. When I called the government help desk to get that straightened out, I was informed that getting her reinstated would take several months and without her being on the system, she would be held up at the border as a student who had "terminated her status", unable to re-enter the country. Remember, we're talking about an elementary school girl, far away from home. Was there ANY way around this difficulty? Well yes, there was, but it required letters and certifications and forms and correspondence back and forth with the Austrian embassy and faxing documents and even then one had to hold their breath that it would all work out, that she wouldn't just be kept stuck in Tijuana. I spent all last summer worrying about that girl, but all my efforts did work out.

At the beginning of this process, I was that family's best friend, but once that visa was in her hands, my importance faded. The first year, they gave me Christmas presents, and after all that difficulty of the summer, they told me that their son, a professional artist, was painting a small painting for me as a token of their appreciation, "Look for him to bring it by to your office." However, as the weeks went on, the son never showed up and then I was told that he hadn't painted it, yet, but he was going to, soon. They continued to talk about and promise that painting for many months (and then the next Christmas came and went in which that painting was still the one and only, yet to come, present), but I knew in my heart that since he hadn't painted it yet, it would never happen. The truth is that I didn't really care to have the painting that much (I had later had a chance to see his work at a gallery reception and I wasn't impressed), although I did like the idea of somebody doing that for me, and I would have hung it up on my office wall. I probably should have simply released them from this "obligation" (and I certainly never needed or expected ANY presents), but instead I felt that the better course was to remain enthusiastic over the ultimate receipt of it, for to do otherwise would have been to insult the son's work and their generous original intention. So, in a way, by being polite and considerate of their feelings, I was setting myself up for being hurt in mine.

It was a relief to me when I could transfer this girl's Homeland Security file to her new school and for once I could breath easy about that responsibility for her. Let her new school deal with it.

That was, in particular, one graduate's family I anticipated it would be exciting to see at this graduation, because even though I had not been one of her teachers, she never would have been able to even be there at the school at all if I hadn't done what I had done (on an entirely volunteer basis)--I therefore felt personally "involved" in her graduation.

Ha ha ha, the joke was on me. For one thing, there was no one there for her at all at the graduation. Why? I have no idea. Did it really mean nothing to them, or had there been some kind of family falling-out? Was she being punished for having committed some rebellion? All I know is that she graduated alone, unwatched, and uncelebrated. During and afterwards, she had with her her classmate friends, of course, and it looked like as soon as possible she had stripped off her graduation attire and was ready to go off to the beach or something with one friend or other. I went over to her with my congratulations, one person at the school who could demonstrate caring about her, and I also wanted to let her know that I had gotten everything all set for her at her new school and she would be able to have a trouble-free summer, able to cross the border as many times as she wanted without concern or anxiety. But as I walked up to her, she couldn't have cared less. Her eyes flickered across my face for a brief, disinterested second. I said "Congratulations!", she mumbled a barely audible "thanks" as she turned away from me, and then she and her friend with their stripped-off graduation gowns hanging over their arms, hurried away and off into their pre-prep-school summer without another word or glance backwards.

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