Commencement is defined as a beginning and an ending

When you’ve been doing something like this for as long as I have — and these weekly musings date back to winter 1990 — you realize that sooner or later, you just might run out of good ideas.

Interesting stories, like any valuable commodity, can become scarce, which creates a greater demand … or lessens it entirely.

For the economists who might be reading this, allow me to apologize for the grotesque bastardization of Keynesian theory.

I was, after all, an English major in college, which explains a lot.

Speaking of Notre Dame — where I enrolled in absolutely zero business classes, preferring to spend the vast majority of my time reading books and writing papers, when I wasn’t just having fun — I talked with my old roommate/housemate the other night. Our conversation unspooled like an unattended movie projector, jumping from one reel to another without thought to continuity.

He too was an English major, and you can make of that what you will, though he went on to finish ND law school at a time when I was covering high school sports for my hometown newspaper.

Neither of us mentioned the fact we had just passed a milestone — the 49th anniversary of our graduation day.

That Sunday in May remains among the most kaleidoscopic, quasi-hallucinatory memories of my lifetime, and there have been many.

For one thing, that entire spring semester — my final foray into higher education, as it turned out — involved precious little actual studying and even less worrying about my future. I’m reminded of a scene in “The Paper Chase” in which stately, dour Professor Kingsfield summons James Hart, his most promising student, who also happens to be bedding his daughter, to his elevated lectern.

“Mr. Hart,” huffs the gruff Harvard faculty legend, reaching into his trousers pocket, “here’s a dime. I want you to call your mother and tell her there’s serious doubt about your becoming a lawyer.”

I often imagined that very scenario playing out as I went through the motions that spring, showing up for class when it was convenient, doing enough solid (but not exemplary) work to stay under the radar, accumulating the necessary credits to graduate.

The atmosphere that morning on campus bordered on maximum security, which was entirely understandable, seeing as how the president of the United States had accepted an invitation to deliver the commencement address. I’d never been searched by a Secret Service agent before, and it was as intimidating as you can imagine.

Adding to the surreal nature of the event, but on a much more microcosmic level, was the drama created by the immutable laws of addition and subtraction. Each graduate was given a maximum of five tickets, which should have been perfect math for me — one father, one mother, one sister, one brother and one favorite aunt.

But there was one vexing problem, a Virginia coed with whom I had rekindled a volatile relationship that had begun two years earlier. All that winter we’d forgotten to remember the things that drove us apart, once upon a time, preferring the glow of a new start.

Hence, when she realized I was one ticket short and she would be the one left (literally) on the outside looking in, she was not happy.

I considered asking President Carter for advice but decided to deal with the problem myself since I was, ostensibly, a grown man now.

Four years earlier, as I prepared to graduate from high school, the idea of growing up never entered my mind, though it should have.

Like any teenage boy who’d already been flattened by infatuation’s cruel steamroller a couple of times, I had steered clear of adolescence’s addictive siren call, remaining resolutely single.

By prom season of my senior year, I was asked to stay after class by an English teacher who, if I’d had a vote, would have been elected Educator of the Year, Decade and Century; she was that important to me and what had passed for my academic progress.

“I understand that you’ve yet to get a date for the prom,” she said, giving me the kind of look I’d only seen from my mother, the one that proclaimed I’d done something that had truly disappointed her.

Realizing that silence was my best defense, I simply nodded.

“Well,” she said, nodding toward the busy hallway, “I happen to know there’s a girl out there who’s just waiting for you to ask her.”

In retrospect I should have understood she was speaking in a general sense, hinting I was about to miss out on a seminal experience, a rite of passage, and that I’d regret it in the future.

Instead, being the smart-alecky kid I was and had always been, I said, “You wouldn’t happen to have a name now would you?”

So I skipped another prom, though I did go through with attending the graduation ceremony, which was held in a stuffy, steamy gym instead of the open-air comfort of the football stadium, all because some random school board member had heard it might rain.

Up until the other day, when I was looking through one of several dozen unpacked plastic totes hiding in the basement, demanding my attention, I believed high school and college commencements were the sum total of my lifetime’s graduations.

Turns out there might have been another.

Tucked inside a Converse sneaker box labeled “Grade School Stuff,” I came across a document, enclosed in a royal blue folder, embossed with the name of the school I’d attended from fourth grade through eighth grade.

Curious, I opened it, and inside there was a certificate signed by the principal, a stern nun who also was my eighth grade teacher.

It was a diploma, one that certified my successful completion of the required course of study.

It provided the date of my graduation.

There was only one problem.

I have absolutely no recollection of ever being presented with such an artifact, no memories attached to such an important milestone, no evidence carefully preserved in a family photo album, nothing tangible, no way to prove to myself it had ever happened.

And that’s how the column you’ve been reading came to be.

The idea was to write a thousand or so words on my eighth grade graduation, but once I realized I’d either been Vulcan mind-melded by Mr. Spock or had my memory erased by the Men in Black, I decided to follow another more realistic pathway.

You’ll have to let me know if the journey was worth the effort.

Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, where, usually, every memory tells a story.