Of course, we are very happy that he graduated and he made fantastic grades in 2013. It was just years 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 that had us worried. A lot of his classes were like the NCAA Basketball Tournament: Survive and Move One.
He survived and now he has all of the rights and privileges that come with being a college graduate, mainly paying off his student loans.
Georgia Southern University is located in Statesboro, Georgia, the birth place of Blind Willie McTell. Nobody could sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell. However, if Blind Willie had his eyesight and could see what Statesboro looked like, he probably would have been an even better blues singer. The town is a combination of Old South, New South, Dirty South, and a few other Souths that you probably don't want to know about.
Statesboro is about 3 1/2 to 4 hours from the Atlanta area. It is probably the worst drive in the United States.
From Marietta, where I live, you have to drive through downtown Atlanta, which is always a nightmare due to various expanding and contracting lanes and traffic going 120 mph bumper to bumper or you can go around Atlanta on I-285, which could make General Patton have a nervous breakdown.
After you make it through Atlanta, you'll stop in the Eagle's Landing/McDonough area for about 30 minutes due to various fatal traffic accidents that occur about every 15 minutes in that part of Metro Atlanta. Then it's on to Macon!
In Macon, you'll get on Interstate 16, which is known as "the most boring Interstate in America". Fortunately, due to your 1200 near death experiences just getting to Interstate 16, you are wide awake for your trip into Statesboro.
We made it into Statesboro and met up with our son. We discovered he had another accomplishment besides graduation: a haircut. His apartment was decorated in what I call "Young Adult Male". It had several sports teams posters on the wall and a Christmas Tree that could even cause Charlie Brown to shake his head. We went and picked up his girlfriend, had dinner and then went to the school for a "Latern Walk". We joined her parents and sisters for this walk. No one in the girlfriend's family is under 5'11". My wife and I looked like Hobbits searching for the ring.
The "Latern Walk" is a Georgia Southern tradition. The graduating seniors walk around campus with a latern and talk about all of the good times they had at Georgia Southern. You can imagine that with some students, this might be a very R rated conversation. However, my son just pointed at the College of Business building and said, "I hate that place".
When the walk finished, my wife and I retired to our motel. Our room was nice. The room next door to us, however, had a family that argued all night long. At least one person in that family argued. This person was apparently telling the other person what he thought and why he shouldn't think that. That's what I got out of the seven hour discussion. Guess the gender of who was doing the most talking.
The big day came and my son's girlfriend graduated first. It was then I realized that something I started years ago at Louisiana College came back to haunt me.
During my roommate's graduation in 1980, I was seated in the back of the auditorium in the balcony. When they called his name, I yelled "YAY BILL!" to much laughter. Afterwards, I went up to this very attractive Cajun co-ed (jet black hair with deep blue eyes and is a grandmother now) and said, "Did you hear me?". She said, "Yes, Alan Manis, everybody could hear you".
Back then, graduations were solemn occasions and my rebel yell must have punctured the seriousness of the ceremony because graduations now are sort of like WWE wrestling matches. The audience is begged and pleaded not to shout, holler, dance, sing, applaud, or speak in tongues by various high ranking members of the University's faculty. These appeals for an hour of decorum flew through the air and enter the ears of the audience as "Shout as loud and long as you want".
Thus, the awarding of the degrees sounds like this: Bob Smith ("WOOOOOOOOOO BOBBY, MY MAN! DRIVE 'EM REDNECK CRAZY"); Jane Smith, Summa Cum Laude (no appaluse); Jerry Smith ("WOO-WEE, YOU WENT AND BROKE THE WRONG HEART BABY") and on and on. This is funny the first two hundred times you hear it, but then you start fearing for the future of your country.
Of course, when they said, "Benjamin William Manis", I stood up and did "The Wobble". We met one of his professors after the service who saw my little display of joy and said I was the happiest man in the building. She was right.
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