Footloose and Baptist Free (L)

Yesterday was my niece's Baccalaureate. The question of the day seemed to be "What's a Baccalaureate?" When my kids asked it, the answer was simple "I don't know, but I'm pretty sure you don't want to go to it." I was right. Turns out, a Baccalaureate is some sort church service, a sermon to the graduates! I'm sure Marty, graduating in the South, knew this. Hers was probably after church and everyone wore white gossamer dresses under their gowns and enjoyed apple pies and baskets of fried chicken at the church picnic where Jesus himself came down and said grace.

However, up here in Maine where "Jesum Crow" is the closest many get to Amen, the only information I had about Baccalaureate before last night was the recollection of my own, which consisted of three memories. It was in our high school's auditorium and the post party was at a graveyard in Rockland. (Now that I realize what it actually is, I wonder which northern heathen was responsible for cooking up the locale...) But my strongest memory of the evening was of conning Andy Grady into leaving the party and taking me to a convenience store for some unmemorable reason, where in my drunken stupor, I became obsessed with shoplifting a Little Debbie Brownie. I kept trying to slip it in my coat pocket, but was clearly lacking the skills required to actually achieve this, so the crinkly cellophane wrapper was alerting everyone to my many attempts. Andy was a good sport and kept whispering "I'll buy it for you, please stop!". To which I would reply a giggly "shhhhh" and crinkle crinkle slide down my coat's side, over and over again. In retrospect, I think that the clerk must have been working even harder than I was to pretend not to notice. Twenty-five cents was probably not worth the drama. Eventually, I realized my coat did not actually have pockets and put it in my pants. And that was my Baccalaureate evening.