Slow Claps Are For Amateurs

Out of everything I saw in Texas last weekend, one incident stands out the most. It happened at my boyfriend's sister's nursing school graduation. The graduation itself was pretty unorganized and boring, so I'll save you the details of that and go straight to what I now refer to as the greatest moment of my life.

The graduates were split up into two columns with three rows each. If I remember correctly, there were about seven women in each row. At some point in the ceremony, one of these women went up to accept an award for being awesome in some nature or other. When she did the other students began to clap because they were so proud of her. In fact, the superb feelings they had for this student were so great that they tried to give her a standing ovation.

As soon as her name was called and she joyfully sauntered up to the podium, the clapping began. With the very first congratulatory hand thrust, one of the graduates in the back row shot up like she had been strapped to an amusement park ride. Unfortunately, this ride only had one turn because it slowly brought her back into a sitting position after she realized that no one else was standing with her. The clapping continued and eventually, after what seemed like hours to my attention span at this point, a few people in the back row of the left column began to stand. Slowly, oh slowly, other students sitting in the left column began to rise into the standing ovation as well. Only after everyone on that side of the stage had stood did the right column of students begin to join in as well. It started in the back row again, and made it to the middle of the second row before the appropriate time allotted for congratulating their fellow graduate ran out. The girl sitting in the middle of the second row must not have known if she had time to join, because she kind of squatted up and down like she was bobbing on a pool floatie for a few seconds until everyone sat back down.

I sat there laughing inappropriately the entire time, and finally leaned over and whispered into my boyfriend's ear:

You know how you've always wanted to start a slow clap? I think we've just witnessed the slow clap version of the standing ovation. I'm not sure if there's any way to ever top this.