snark: A study in maroon. And also gray.

So, my brother graduated from college last weekend with a practical-for-his-career-or-some-shit major and a holy-shit-physically-cannot-stop-talking-about-this-because-he's-so-interested-in-it minor, which is usually a pretty good combination for getting through college without wanting to kill yourself, but also finding a job afterwards so you don't want to kill yourself for having blown six figures on a useless degree.

Graduating from high school is a pile of asshat wankery where you watch a slideshow of a bunch of people you hope to never see again, to a soundtrack of Green Day and Vitamin C songs that are almost old enough to be graduating with you. Then about two-thirds of those people start crying about how these are the best years of your life, because you're all at a point in your lives when everything that happens to you, from that one girl whose name you won't remember ten years from now totally calling you a bitch (even though she's the real bitch), to the breakup of your epic seven-month relationship, is a Big Fucking Deal, which will eventually culminate in The End of the Fucking World.

Graduating from college, on the other hand, actually is a Big Fucking Deal, so I flew up for it.

The ceremony didn't actually start until 11, but the doors opened way before that, and people started lining up outside at ass o'clock in the morning, so we had two options: 1) arrive an hour and a half early and have a chance at sitting in the room where the graduation was actually happening, or 2) arrive at what most people would consider a reasonable time and sit in a different room upstairs where we could watch it on TV, which is totally the same, and exactly what I flew the fuck up from Texas to do.

Thankfully, I got to spend the four hours I was there sitting immediately in front of a woman whose daughter was, in all probability, the first person she was even remotely acquainted with to go to college. How do I know? Using my brilliant powers of observation and deduction. (If I were Benedict Cumberbatch or Robert Downey, Jr., this next part would have really cool special effects with slow-motion and text overlays and shit, but all you're getting is a list, so use your damn imagination.)

Evidence:
1. She was wearing this shirt:

To a graduation.
At a private school.

2. Roughly every three seconds, she would knee or kick me in the back and react in a manner that quickly devolved from "herp derp, sorry," to "why do you keep turning around and glaring at me?" Curiously, that sentence is still accurate with a comma after "roughly."

3. She had no internal monologue. Whenever anything entered her head, it would immediately exit through her mouth at a decibel dangerously close to shouting. This was especially true as we shifted from one part of the ceremony to the next. "What are they doing now? Oh, is she going to speak?" Read your damn program; that's why they gave you one. Mathematically, it looks like this:

No, she didn't have arms. She was Venus de Fucking Milo.

4. Every time someone's name was announced, she would screech some kind of horrible war cry, like "ay-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi-yi!" except when it was her daughter. Then she just frantically screamed "THAT'S MY BABY! THAT'S MY BABY!" like she was trying to put out an AMBER alert.

Inferences:
1. She has no concept of physical or social boundaries. Possibly, she has no awareness of or control over her own body.

2. She has absolutely no idea how to behave in this setting, due either to a lack of previous experience or a lack of ability to learn from previous experience.

Conclusion:
It's really fucking fun to sit in front of her.

~~Because graduations are boring as fuck~~ For the benefit of everyone who couldn't be at this joyfest in person, I live-tweeted the ceremony. For those of you who don't follow me on Twitter, I'm including it here. You're welcome. The literally dozens of you who already do can skip this next part if you want.

Now that he's finished his ~~liberal indoctrination~~ college degree, it's probably not long before he ends up on some kind of watchlist. A few years from now, you'll probably see this FBI file photo during the manhunt: