Thunderstorms And A High School Graduation

Ready For Last Day Of School In Her Ryder's Cup Tee Shirt

On Our Way To Mitch's Honor Assembly

It's another cloudy, warm, humid day, with thunderstorms overnight and more predicted on and off during the day.  Fortunately, Mitchell's graduation will be inside the SMU Field House starting at 6:00.  It's also Marisa's last day of school; she takes a math test and will be home by 12:30, to celebrate the end of her seventh grade classes with cheesecake Beth made for her.

Getting Mitch Ready

Yesterday, our morning really started at 9:30 with a drive to Highland Park High School, parking on a street with residence only parking signs.  We were there for the awards ceremony which took just under two hours.  There were two pages of awards which was a major reason for the two hour ceremony, as each award was described, the student's name called out, and we waited then for them to walk up on stage. Mitchell received an award for excellence in Spanish but was ineligible for other academic awards because this was his first year at the school.  Otherwise, he would have received lots of honors because he's our grandson.

Honor's Assembly

A few observations about the student population.  Of 500 students, close to a hundred were honored because they had GPA's above a 4:00.  Amazingly bright kids or grade inflation, most likely some of both. The student body in this affluent Dallas community was amazingly homogeneous, as one would expect.  Most of the award winners were white, with a few Asians, one African American.  They were all well dressed, healthy, and slim. No problems with obesity in this community. Affluence and demographics is all.  Of the top ten in the class, four were Asians, the rest Caucasian, mostly guys.  This, I assume, is typical of most of the affluent community high schools in the States. I don't think there's much of a tradition of sending your child off to a prep school here in Dallas, like it is on the East Coast. So the very best students here in Dallas tend to attend public schools and Highland Park is one of the best.  I did walk the halls in between classes and was surprised by the casualness of dress, shorts, t shirts, flip flops for most of the students. At Robert College and Reserve, I was used to guys in ties and coats, gals similarly dressed.  In fact, I wore a tie and coat to class for most of my forty five years of teaching, a sartorial Luddite in today's classrooms.

Two Pages Of Awards!

We were back by noon, just in time for Marisa who only had a half day of testing.  We had leftovers for lunch, yippee, the vodka pasta with shrimp.  After lunch, Beth and Evie went off shopping to the grocery store, and I stayed home with Marisa.   I fell asleep reading and Marisa was upstairs, watching a show, then taking a shower.  We then took it easy the rest of the afternoon, though Evie worked out on the treadmill for an hour, and I took an hour and a half walk into town, to strip malls where the likes of Trader Joe's and all the restaurants are located.  When I left, Cody went crazy because I was going without him.  So, after my walk and a brief hiatus, I went on another walk to keep Cody happy and healthy.

 Popular Martin Houses In Highland Park Neighborhood

A Happy Girl, A Serious Guy, Siblings, Too

Around 5:00, Beth, Evie and I settled down because it was wine time, enjoyed a quiet hour just talking because Rami was going to pick up a fried chicken dinner at the hot spot in Dallas called Bubba's.  He was home around 6:30 and we all sat down quickly and dug into the fried chicken, beans, cole slaw and fries.  Clearly, everyone was starved and the chicken was top notch, a great crust and moist inside, just the way it should be.  After dinner, we relaxed, played games on iPads until it was time for Marisa to go upstairs to bed.  So we then turned on the NBA game, and Rami, Evie and I watched it to its conclusion.  After a half hour, Beth had enough and went into her bedroom to watch her own shows.  We were upstairs by 10:15, ready to read some and sleep.