“Before we begin
our regular commencement
tonight,” said combined elementary/high school principal Jim
Albertson, “we
have a special award to present. Will Windy Wilson please come
up here on the
stage with us?”
Windy looked up at the
stage in the gymnasium
and all he saw were black choir robes and smiles. He looked at
his fellow
spectators and all he saw were grins and people sitting down.
“Windy?” said
Jim. Windy walked up to the
stage and shook hands with the principal. “Put this on.”
Windy draped a black
robe around himself and
put the mortarboard on his head.
Albertson pulled
a piece of paper from his
shirt pocket.
“Alphonse
Wilson, it is the judgment of your
community and friends that no one has ever worked harder for an
honorary
doctor’s degree. Am I right on that?”
The young
graduates clapped and hooted, and
so did the audience. Windy looked at the floor and blushed right
through his
grey beard.
“We can’t give
you an honorary doctorate here
because we don’t have one. But your neighbors discovered that
you only lacked
one class to graduate from high school, and we can do something
about that.”
“Alphonse Wilson
… known to all as Windy …
this school … these young graduates … and all your friends and
neighbors are
proud to bestow upon you an honorary high school diploma.”
Jim placed a
ribbon with a medal hanging
from it around Windy’s neck and handed him a rolled-up
certificate.
Not too many
aging cowboy camp cooks and
philosophers receive standing ovations, but then, there’s
nothing very ordinary
about Windy Wilson and we all know that.
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