you know you're getting old when...

I went to my little cousin's graduation at school today. They do this graduation thing every year, but this year was a bit more special since he was graduating from the lower school which meant his class would have a flower pinned to their suit AND they have a validictorian. I was sort of tricked into going since my dad had called me at work to remind me that I had to go home straight from work to make it for his graduation. I rushed home to find out my dad wasn't going and that I was going to go by myself. Great. So I sat through 2 hours of little kids getting their "diploma" to go into the next grade. I ended up sitting next to my little cousin's english tutor (he wanted to go, I duno why) for the whole event. I was prepared to be bored to death, which for about maybe half an hour I was (seeing little kids that you don't know get awards and stuff is kind of boring). But when it was my little phat cousin's turn to go across the stage to receive his "diploma" I had that weird tears welling up in your eyes thing going. Well, not exactly, but I had that "my little boy is growing up" feeling. Anyhoos, I do have to comment that the validictorian (which was a girl, yay!) was very good. You have to take into consideration their age, but damn! she was good! She made the parents laugh and she made her classmates laugh. It was good. I was impressed. The choir at the end (which consisted of just about everyone in the lower school, grades 4-7) was pretty good. Very angel like. To end off my evening of "being like a parent" I stepped out of the Upper School building to a nice heavy rain shower. Great. I had already attempted to park fairly close to the school on the road because I had arrived early. So guess what me and about 35 other families were greeted with when we approached our cars? That's right. A parking ticket! Blah! Now, either the rain washed away how much I was fined, or the dude that was mean enough to stick it there, decided to give us a warning. According to my sister, there must be a fine, but my dad said "let's just wait till they send us something to say we haven't paid yet." Haha. So, that was my tiring evening out. Seeing all those young parents out a thought crossed my mind, "being a parent must be a lot of work."