Graham graduates

And so, as anticipated, Graham graduated from high school yesterday. Here's a picture of Sam, with whom Graham will room freshman year at UNC and who has been a close friend to Graham the last few years and Ronen, who was closer to Graham earlier in childhood and then a little less close in high school. After a year in Grenada on a study abroad program, Ronen will join Sam and Graham at UNC.

I thought it was important to get pictures of Graham with people he had been friends with earlier in life because life experience has shown that friendships ebb and flow over time but that the ones formed in early years of schooling end up being very meaningful, even if you don't stay tight for years or decades at a time.

The graduation ceremony was mostly par for the course, with the exception of a video of students sharing reflections and wisdom. The video cycled back over the same five people on maybe five topics, two of whom were speakers. They seem like nice people, no younger or more green than any other 18-year old, but mostly we didn't need six examples of any one graduate's wisdom. They should have had more kids in the video because, after all, all we really wanted to see was our own kids or, failing that, more examples of other kids we'd seen grow over the years and decades.

Which takes me back to one actual bit of true wisdom shared by a speaker, quoting someone else: "take pictures of people, not buildings and statues." Absolutely true. Which makes my failure (as a 15-year old, admittedly, and a cocky one at that) to take pictures of Leslie at the royal wedding in 1981 one of my greatest failings ever. But we already knew that.