The Grand March (A Graduation Story)

The trumpet player pulled into the empty high school parking lot and sat in his car, wondering where everybody was. He didn’t know it yet, but he was early. He’d gotten the day and the place right on his calendar, but the hour wrong. But because he didn’t know this yet, he wondered if it wasn’t in fact yesterday that he was supposed to be here, playing for the grand march that was the highlight of graduation ceremonies in this small Maine town, and now everybody in the town’s band was wondering where the hell he had been.

He got out of the car and walked into the gym. The sight reassured him. The balloons festooned the ceiling, the congratulatory posters papered the west end wall under the basket, the deejay’s booth was ready, the band’s setup was - well, it needed work. He was here to play for the grand march, and the grand march was sitting there, waiting. Just add people. The people would be here when it was time, but it wasn’t time yet. He had entered the wrong time on his calendar; he was early.

The grand march. A hundred just-graduated high school seniors in white tuxes and white gowns, entering the gym by twos in stately march step and snaking across the gym floor in patterns of varying degrees of intricacy and risk of embarrassment for twenty-five minutes, before coming to a halt in practiced lines, to be presented by name to the adoring, cheering crowd. It was always a full crowd. Then again, multiply each graduate by three to account for the standard complement of adoring family members, and that was enough to fill the gym. Still, with all those folk about, it was a big deal.

In fact, it was a show, a big show for a small town, and the producers were determined to get it right. To get a hundred high school seniors to march by twos on a gym floor in large “X