Daughter will be graduated from high school this week, and I cannot tell you how conflicted I am about this. Some say "will be graduating" is preferable, and others say "will graduate" is sufficient. What about "is graduating"? I cry out in a shriek of grief. Is that OK?
Hmm, you think. You're channeling all your emotion about the event into something trivial, no doubt to avoid dealing with this enormous change. Gee, thanks Dr. Freud, here's my copay.
Of course I am drowning my sorrows with pedantic grammar, and I bet I'm not the only one. Somewhere there's a parent thinking, "It seems like yesterday that we were waiting in line for the kindergarten bus." And then another parent says, "You mean waiting on line," and the other replies, "Do I look British? Are we going to go queue for aluminium and put it in the car boot? I've never liked you and now I'm glad there's no reason we have to be polite when we run into each other at school."
It's a time of raw emotion, in other words. The good thing, though, is that it doesn't feel like it was just yesterday that the kindergarten bus came and she walked up the steep steps with jaunty pride. It feels like it's been a very long time, which is why it's OK that it's over, he said with a strained smile and a twitching eyelid.
All those milestones! At first, you meet the bus when it returns and walk hand-in-hand back to the house. Then one day the kid is old enough not to take your hand — you never know whether this is a major change in a behavioral pattern or just a one-day aberration, and that's just as well; something inside of you would have said, "Smear some Super Glue on your palm tomorrow" just to make sure you have one more time.
Then you don't meet the bus, because Daughter knows the way back home. Because you are irrational, your heart ticks up a bit if she's a tad late. Either the bus was a minute late, or two ninja kidnappers rappelled down from the trees and snatched her up.
That's ridiculous. They wouldn't work in pairs, there'd just be one.
Oh, that's ridiculous. There are no ninja kidnappers. The bus just went into a ravine, that's all.