Aaron M. Fortkamp

Absolute chaos struck the gymnasium upon the children’s entrance. Everybody and their mother wanted a picture, and they weren’t even supposed to bring their mothers, it was supposed to be immediate family only, which is why I and Alex’s mom sat there unaccompanied. But other people brought aunts, uncles, cousins. Other people did not arrive to the gymnasium/cafeteria as early as we did, and did not get the front row seats we did, though they could have, we were all asked to leave the pizza lunch with our kids at the same time. Those who opted to come later were now looking at a basketball court’s distance between them and their tiny child in the tiny mortarboard. What kind of Instagram photo is that?

So. Everyone (hyperbole? I don’t know, I didn’t look around to see who was left behind, I’m just going with my gut on this one) yes, everyone bum-rushed the stage the moment their particular child’s class entered the room. Before they could even get situated on the risers and their teachers could straighten all their hats, the parent hordes were upon them. (Parents? Is that hyperbole? A bit. I’d give it about 60-40 the mothers. 70-30, actually. Again, I didn’t look around, perhaps the fathers were saving the seats, but it was definitely mostly mothers, flocking and fawning and acting as though not another person in that auditorinasium mattered in the slightest, as though no one else felt what they were feeling, no one else needed to see the year-long trial pay off in a public ceremony that would validate them for having succeeded in ushering this barely-formed human through only the first and certainly the easiest nine-month year of their presumptive 13-year childhood academic career. More mothers, who of course were much more likely, statistically, to have shouldered the bulk of the extra work a suddenly school-aged child requires, the homework, the transportation, the discipline, the socializing, the emotional toll of separation, but there were some fathers up there, too, butting their way sans contact through the crowds, each person using their auras and outstretched phone-holding arms only, but butting nonetheless, through crowds of one another to holler their child’s name or embarrassing nickname or family catch phrase or a whimsical whoop, anything to grab the child’s attention for as long as it took to capture the correct facial expression for posterity. Also for likes, gotta get those likes.)

They also… would not stop. They just kept coming, and if no one phone-butted them out of the way in turn—they just stayed. Photography complete, or filling up their phone, either way, they stood there, cooing, as if enslaved by the Sirens, as if they were playing a game of chicken with the other parents, first one who sits down loves their child the least. Finally the authorities had to get on the mic, I think the principal?, got on the mic and told everyone in not so friendly a tone that it was not actually picture time, it was graduation time, you can take your pictures later at the appropriate moment during the ceremony, the very ceremony you are holding up with your picture-taking.

Am I above any of this? Absolutely not.

Did I have an easier time extracting myself from the classroom to get their earlier than most only because my son is autistic and accustomed to not really understanding what the plan is and has learned to kind of just roll with things and see how they work out and trust his parents will not lead him astray and so when they say okay! see you in a few! he will just take his seat and wait until someone takes him by the hand to show him where to go next? Yes. Certainly. Three of Alex’s classmates were in tears when we arrived because they fully understood the social situation (if not the hypothetical future situation of “your parents are coming soon, they signed the sheet, they’ll be here”) that other kids’ parents had arrived and were paying out that jackpot of affection and attention that had been promised or alluded to, and these kids weren’t getting it and their gratification could not be delayed and so these three separate children were crying, one of them experiencing waves of grief that sent him on an emotional tether back and forth across the room, until his mother arrived with balloons and a grandmother and big to-do and indeed everyone was jealous and so I kind of got it in the end, but yes. My child is not that kind of child. We extricated ourselves easily.

So too was it almost random that as we came upon the near-empty childatorium we took seats in the front row. I very nearly guided us towards the last row. We’d done a graduation last year, you see, from his preschool, and it was a song-filled, outdoor, sweaty, overexposed and sunshiny hour of me realizing Alex has more needs than other kids his own age, more needs than I ever usually get to see in terms of how he interacts with his teachers and classmates and the world at large. At the preschool graduation I watched as he paid no attention to literally anything that was going on until the singing started, had to be guided by the hand just to exit the building and find his seat, much less walk up to the balloon rainbow backdrop to receive his diploma. All of which I only mention because the photo opportunities were much less frequent or photogenic that I’d expected going into the affair, and that now, this year, I had no expectation of getting an awesome graduation ceremony pic that would succeed in its goal to preserve this moment for posterity and also get me all the likes.

But hey, line of sight is better than no line of sight, even if the probability of a good photo op was low, so we picked the front row. And yes I was pleased that Alex’s class happened to take the riser more or less directly in front of us, and that he was in the front row as well himself. I didn’t clock his teacher until his class was mostly already by us, so I wasn’t on the lookout for him at high alert until I saw the line of children break, and I looked back to investigate the stoppage and saw Alex, who had stopped himself and thus stopped the line, and his teacher scurrying over toward him, something had happened, maybe his mortarboard had been bumped off-kilter as would continue to happen throughout the ceremony and he’d stopped to straighten it, perhaps he had literally bumped into someone, maybe a parent who had dashed in for a close-up and tried to dash away again and caught the corner of his hat in the process. In any case, he had made it into the place by himself, following his class, walking in line, almost all the way to his goal, but then he’d stopped and the teacher scurried over to take him by the hand and lead him to their riser and sat him down in the front. Excellent line of sight for me, once all the parents had been chastened enough to return to their seats.

So I got my photos and I’ll post this eventually and get my likes, but what I had accepted about myself, that I am a socialist misanthrope, that I want everyone to have the same rights and the same access to nourishment and happiness as everyone else, but that also other people exercising their rights and happiness and yes also nourishment tends to nauseate me a little and I don’t want to be around them, I didn’t necessary expect that to translate, or to have replicated, or to have been mimicked? in others. I don’t know exactly what I was seeing, or where exactly it was all coming from (I tend to doubt socialist misanthropy as a common motivator), but it seemed pretty clear once we were all shoved into a big room together that was still too small to hold us all that none of the adults truly gave a damn about each other. It was them and their child and the rest of the company present could fuck right off and die, or not, either way, just don’t get in the way of my iPhone camera and I won’t have to cut a bitch.

You know how when you drive a car, and someone in another car does something stupid that very nearly causes that person’s car to come into contact with your car, and you don’t say to yourself That asshole’s car almost damaged my car, you say That asshole almost hit me? I don’t know if you’re aware of this but social media is changing where our “car” sense of self is. What constitutes the “me” while we’re in a crowded room with other people, all of whom are experiencing the same social scenario as us, is changing. That “me” used to encompass them. It doesn’t anymore. The closest thing I experienced to that was when we were taking photos of our children one by one beneath the rainbow balloon arch (ahh! déjà vu!), and we took the photo of the child and the parents for the group in front of us, and then the father said out loud, “I s’pose it’s my turn, now” in an amicable way, and we got our picture taken with Alex in turn by him—that used to be the whole vibe, the whole time. I don’t think I’m crazy, or misremembering, or fantasizing, I feel pretty confident that when I was on the other end of these ceremonies, the mood felt entirely different, the people, the adults gathered round us actually felt concern for other people’s children and included them in their “me” and were genuinely happy to see them succeed and graduate, not as much as for their own child but it wasn’t nothing, even before I knew which of my “friends” would actually stick the landing and keep the title for a while I could feel the love and concern coming from their parents—70-30 the moms again—and it felt palpable and real, I felt like in a pinch I could come to any one of them and ask for a sandwich or a dry pair of shoes and they’d find a way to get it done for me.

It’s not like that now. Our “me” has migrated. It’s online now. I know, big reveal, social media did it, but it’s still a striking thing to experience live. We care about each other’s kids still, just, maybe not the literal real-life kids right in front of us. We take pictures and share them not just for the likes but because we want to encourage other people to take pictures and share them, too, because we get invested in them from afar the same way we used to get invested in them in person. It’s just, things get awkward now, when the in-person events have to happen. It’s like meeting your ex in line at the movies. Or no, where do lines happen still. Concerts! Oh but that hits too close, I literally just went to a concert with my girlfriend and her ex last night… but you know what I mean. How about a theme park, there’s a roller coaster and you happen to line up and have to pass by your ex once every time the line does a 180 on its way to the front, and it’s like why, why do you even have to be here, this thing would be happening with or without you and I’m just here for the thing, we’ve got nothing more to say to each other. You are not part of my me anymore. We could all be doing this individually, for all I care, except also live on Facebook because there needs to be an audience, somewhere. Just, not right here, because who are you anyway? You’re nobody. Not to me. Now, you’re in my line of sight, so I’m gonna just… lead with the camera… right on by. Perfect. Snap, post, like like like.