a graduate and a tassel.

Yay for my brother Jase!

Now, there are a lot of reasons to cheer for him, but today we cheer because he graduated with his master’s degree in screenwriting from UCLA.

He wore a cap and gown and everything. But let me say that those things are tricky. Especially when you get a cap that is defunct.

But I should back up.

It’s just a little while before Jase has to meet all his fellow graduates and we are hanging out at his school. He decides he should be a little ahead of the game and put on his accoutrements, pulling on the cap first. And as soon as he puts it on, he wants to showcase how snugly it fits.

So he proceeds to do a pretty wild head dance with the cap in place. He swings his head from one side to the other, neck oscillating like he might not actually have any vertebrae in there at all. He finishes with a flourish and we give him mad props–how could you not, after a performance like that?

And then he tries to put on the tassel.

Uh-oh, because the button is totally missing. There is a little screw, but it’s very short and the tassel won’t stay put without the button to keep it there. Which is when my mom starts doubting the wisdom of the dance he just performed. She even mentions that it was quite wild, and starts to suspect that the nature of his flailing sent the button somewhere far far away, much like the galaxy where star wars is.

So we all start to look for that button, and being a little bit devilish, I jump on the bandwagon and talk about that dance really being just way too wild, that surely a button would have no chance against those moves.

Jason is saying that he thinks the button was never there in the first place, but really, it’s hard to tell because well, that dance. I suppose that will be one of the questions we ask God at the end of time (whatever that means): Oh hi, God! thanks for peanut butter and I always suspected animals could talk but just chose to keep that a secret and wow! the way you made it so that we are all eternal must speak volumes about how you love us, wanting us to stay around forever and all–but what I really want to say is: what’s the story with the button?

And I will pray pray pray that God mentions Jason’s wild head dance and how no button could stay put with that going on.

Oh, that would be glorious. Angels would sing. Or maybe laugh. And I would probably do both.

But the button never did materialize. However, we ran into a pal of his who happened to have a safety pin on hand and I don’t wanna brag or nothing, but I did manage to jerry-rig it so that the pin kept the tassel in place and nobody was none the wiser for it.

Then we tried to put on his Miss America type sash thing and that was a bit of a disaster because by the end, it looked a little ripped in the back and something was hanging oddly down his back like a deflated water balloon.

Oops.

We were laughing and he was like great and luckily, a friend of his helped him get all put together. Apparently they saw him before he walked and was like, Excuse me, you need help. Not like a question, but a statement of fact. So by the time he did walk, he looked pretty darn good.

See?

And here we all are, so proud of the guy!

I just wish everyone who is so proud of Jase could have been here today, too–cause there are lots more where that comes from.