Thoughts on September 1st

September 1st is a big deal in Lithuania, students bring flowers to teachers and principals and everybody dresses up for the first day of school (I'm wearing French cuffs, la-dee-dah). Here's some things I noticed:

• Mothers go bananas making sure their kids look perfect.
• Teenage boys look stupid, because either nobody told them their shirt collar belongs inside their sport coat, or they were too stupid to believe that the 70s are over.
• Way more students showed up for this than will ever show up for class.
• So many, in fact, that a good chunk had to stand outside (for some reason 400 seats were arranged for 800 people in a hall that can only seat 400 but could stand 1,000).
• The girl standing next to me had a femullet.
• An increasing number of freshman have repugnant face piercings.
• What's most interesting of all is that year after year we listen to the student anthem, Gaudeamus: I do indeed mean *listen* and not sing, because even when each student is given a piece of paper with the words on it, nobody sings; it's worse than everybody murmuring the hymns in church. Why do we do it? It's tradition they tell me. The tradition of showing that we can't learn our anthem? What do I know they say.

Resolution: I'm gonna learn the words to Gaudeamus and sing it out loud next year at the ceremony. I will bet you that everybody will look at me as if I'm the weirdo for standing out rather than the only one doing as he should.