June 14 - High School Graduation

They've done it all: prom, yearbook party, Senior Skip Day. Now it's time to don cheap taffeta caps and gowns, line up in the gym, march onto the football field to a trudging rendition of Pomp and Circumstance by the high school band and hear the same tired cliches about endings and beginnings and the best days of their lives and following dreams.

But to graduating seniors, there is nothing trite or tired about it. For these 18-year-olds, nothing like this has ever happened before. There is a reason why these rituals endure. It truly is everything the speeches say: the turning point between childhood and adulthood.

It's all so beautiful and so frightening.

Whether off to work, military service, college or the unemployment office, each graduate will have to make harder decisions, assume more responsibility than ever before. If they sleep through the alarm this fall, mom won't be there to rap on the bedroom door and insist they get up. It's time to fly solo.

For one last summer, they are still kids leaning on Mom and Dad, but with adult life closing in, they already know the party's over.