Kirk Gibson can't be bothered to attend his son's HS graduation (SIAP)

After all the years you have been on this site, you are really amazed by that?

 

Sure I can.

I'm just stating how I personally feel. How these things affect me personally. No one else.

And I think it's fair to wonder if the Gibson family's values align with mine. Some of you are projecting your values onto him, right? What's different about me giving him the benefit of the doubt by doing the same?

 

that is like the biggest no-shit observation that's been made in the entire time i've spent making posts here at SJ.

 

Damn them for not thinking about it exactly as you would!

 

I hit one over-the-fence home run in Little League. For that one home run, my dad had worked for hours and hours and hours and hours with me. And then some more hours. We worked at the field until his arm was ready to fall off and my hands were blistered to the bone. I wanted to hit a home run more than anything I've ever wanted, to this day.

When it finally happened, he wasn't there. He was working. But when I think back upon that night, I don't think, "Dad missed my home run." I think about how exciting it was to call him at work and tell him about it, and how excited he was on the other end of the phone, his usual rote work routine interrupted by this terrific news. Now, I'm sure he wished he could have been there. But from my end, calling him to surprise him with the news was just as exciting.

Now, obviously the events are a little different. Gibson's kid's graduation was a planned event. My dad couldn't very well take off from the night shift at the factory every time I had a game all summer long, just in case I laid into one.

But there is one possible similarity: In hindsight, the destination, the home run, wasn't as important to our relationship as how we got there. Those hours and hours and hours of practice. And he was there for every second of that. All things being equal, would I prefer my dad had been there for this big moment? Sure. Did it scar me that he wasn't? No. It would have scarred me if he hadn't wanted to practice with me, though.

 

That observation ranks up there with "The Internet is on computers now?"

 

To 10-year-old me, it was most definitely a woman. And I'll give him a little bit of a pass in that it was a Saturday night in mid-November, when I'm sure the last thing in his mind was being a "baseball star" ... at least after playing that role long enough to land the blonde.

Is high school graduation much different from a funeral or the birth of a child? You're supposed to die and everyone dies. Why go to a relative's funeral? And popping out a kid takes FAR much less effort and is much less of an accomplishment than graduating high school. Why go to the hospital to visit when your child gives birth? Does your kid deserve to be lauded for conceiving and managing not to abort it?

 

Birth of a child is completely different. Completely. Someone new just entered the world. People just became parents for the first time, possibly. Or second. Or third. It's not an event to commemorate the achievement. It IS the achievement. Something actually happened. Hell, I think it's a misnomer to call it an "achievement." It's a different category. To compare the birth of a child to a contrived, boring, pretentious, cliched commencement ceremony is inaccurate.

Funerals are a closer call. I hate them. I am on the record about that. It caused one of the board's all-time brou-ha-has. I go, of course. But the mourn-by-numbers tenor drives me batshit.

Graduations are nice enough, I suppose. But I find them to be a pain in my ass. Particularly my own. I'd have just had them mail me the diploma all three times, if there was not so much social pressure to attend.

Again: I get that some people like the pomp and circumstance and closure and commemoration. I do. My brother in law just graduated college in his 40s, and said he was surprised to find himself choked up when he heard his name called. That's just not me, though. Might not be Kirk Gibson or his son, either. We don't know.

 

For the record, I will attend every one of my own children's graduations, no matter what I happen to be busy with at the time. I suspect that these symbolic rites of passage are typically more emotional for the parents than they are for the participants. Plus, the photos are usually pretty good. But I also think Kirk Gibson reserves the right to feel differently.

 

I have a Master's degree and my 6-year-old and I are tied for how many graduations we've participated in (three).

Yes, I was at all three of his...

 

This is a good tangent actually.

Have the glut of "graduations" diluted the ones that actually matter?

 

Yes. The first one anyone should ever have is high school.

That said I have a picture of my 4-year-old in cap and gown on my desk.