Thumbing through the pages of a website called The Straight Dope, I came across a question that is totally relevant during May, the month of graduations.
Someone on the website asked, “Why is the alphabet in alphabetical order?” The reader adds, “Who decided A was the first letter, B was the second, and so on?”
Excellent questions. Check the dictionary for virtually any popular, western language, and you’ll find things pretty much in A, B, C, D order, whether the language be English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French or any number of tongues that use characters resembling ours.
The question of the ordering of things takes me back to a long-lost Thanksgiving meal at our school, when I was in about the fifth grade. At that time, those who opted for the noon meal at school — and that was most of the student body — went to the cafeteria at Immaculate Conception School, and, naturally, got to line up alphabetically to partake of the turkey with all the trimmings.
Why couldn’t the principal at the time, Sister Mary Comemos Poquito, have chosen some other arrangement for the lineup, for example by looks, or by number of A’s on our report cards, or by the degree of famishment we exhibited? But no, we lined up with the Abeytas, Alarcons, Almanzars and Archuletas at the front of the line. An hour later, those whose last names fell in the middle of the alphabet got some of the remainders: gizzards and wings.
And what did those of us at the end of the line, the Trujillos, Valdezes, Yarbroughs, Zamoras and Zummachs get? You’re right: The wattle, some feathers and something greenish.
Surely someone’s written a book about the deleterious effects of being last. Though I wasn’t at the extreme end of the serving line, the name Trujillo put me close enough to that position.
In a much earlier column, I wrote about the letter to the editor sent by a Santa Fe woman whose graduating son happened to be named Nicholas Raymond Zvelebil. Now unless Nicholas happened to have a brother named Zeke, we can safely assume Nicholas was the last one to get his diploma at Santa Fe High that year.
Nicholas’ mother’s complaint was not whether her son got choice turkey pieces but the fact that so many parents, families and fans of other graduates simply acted as if the entire ceremony had ended after their precious child crossed the stage.
The letter writer lamented the notion that by the time the graduation list had gotten to the m’s (yes, SFHS did the awarding of diplomas alphabetically), most of the spectators had left the bleachers and flooded the field to take photos, shoot off Silly String, and bounce their beach balls.
And that’s a natural consequence of having everything arranged according to the alphabet.
Closer to home, my family attended commencement exercises at Luna Community College for our own certificate-earner. Though the class wasn’t abnormally large (225 candidates, 149 participating in the ceremony), and things flowed smoothly, my son was still about fifth from the last. That’s not a complaint, merely an observation. However, it’s true that many in the audience stayed only until their loved one received the diploma, then left, either to go out and celebrate, or possibly to take photos outside.
Given the elements of most commencement exercises, it’s wishful thinking to believe any such service will be much shorter than two hours. In Luna’s case, it was time well spent, as the main speakers, President Pete Campos and U.S. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, gave rousing deliveries. And LCC registrar Jonathan Ortiz did a fine job as emcee.
• • •
I worked at Highlands during some years that state and federal funding for education was scarce, forcing the university to downsize. We used to joke about how the route of our homecoming parades generally circled several downtown blocks two or three times to give the impression of a mini-Rose Bowl Parade.
Having attended a much smaller commencement ceremony at Luna several years ago, I was impressed by last week’s number of candidates. As the students processed in, to Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, I noticed that robe-clad candidates kept entering the big tent. For a while I wondered whether the students had been ordered to march into the tent, exit through a side opening and enter two or three more times, to give the illusion of large numbers.
But this time, there was no need to exaggerate the numbers. The crowd was huge. Next year, maybe the staff at LCC will order a bigger tent.
• • •
Last week’s column mentioned the universality of that tiny word, “up.” It appears in many contexts. I explained that even though we think of the word mainly as a direction, the opposite of “down,” it’s far more versatile than that.
And to prove my point, I used expressions like “shut up,” which I said doesn’t refer to direction at all. But then Doug Hughes set me straight. He wrote, in part: “In terms of ‘shutting up,’ I would add that the mandible, the jaw and chin bone, does indeed move in an upward direction toward the maxilla, into which our top teeth are fixed, allowing us to remain tight lipped up until the end.”