My Incredibly Racist Entry

The drone of the auditorium was sleep-inviting. Except for trying to keep the kids relatively quiet, the big-wig giving the too-long graduation speech was the only thing to listen to. Finally, the students get up to get into place for having their names read and their walk across the stage.

Now, I had previously been walking a restless Nathan around the lobby and bathroom area of the gym and noticed a lot of young, middle-eastern men walking around. It was making me a bit uneasy, especially the ones walking around with "camera" bags around their waists. I was sincerely hoping they were camera bags.

Anyway, they start to read the names and the students start to walk the stage. Suddenly, an obviously foreign name is read. One whole section of bleachers two sections down from our seats stands up, starts chanting in Arabic (? I guess it was arabic...), playing a drum and waving little foreign flags. It was really loud, imposing, and lasted a bit too long. OK, so now I'm even more uneasy. I ask Sean what flag it is, and he thinks it is Palestinian. They repeat this several more times, even louder when it is obviously one of their buddies. Then, they file out the door and leave, which greatly relieved me. Sean's sister's name was read nearly last, so we had to wait until the bitter end to leave.

So we are shuffling an inch at a time in the mass exodus to get out the doors. The building we are in is set up on a triangular sort of courtyard. There are two buildings right across from the exit, and there seems to be a big bottleneck to get around the mob to the parking lot. So, Abby and I get out the doors, only to find that same group up on a higher sidewalk in this triangular bottleneck, chanting, playing their drums, waving their flags.

I suddenly get a very, very distinct "uh-oh" feeling in the pit of my stomach. Every nerve in my body is telling me to get out, get out, get out of this situation. We are unable to cut through the crowd, unable to go back into the building to find an alternate exit, and right in the midst is this foreign group of young, educated, middle eastern men working themselves up into a dither. And the geography is such that if one of them had an explosive "camera bag", they could've wiped out nearly everybody in that courtyard.

No offense to Heather, but I was fighting back all urge to run for the car during the "let's get a picture of everybody" time. I'm sure whatever pictures come out, I will have a strained look on my face. At least we were on the fringe of the crowd, away from the chanters a bit, so it was a little better, but I still wanted to get away.

So, yay for Heather the Ph.D. Sorry if I was acting a bit weird...