Malihini’s Guide to High School Graduations

Anyone who spends any time in Hawaii quickly learns that, for locals, where a person went to high school is the connector that instantly provides a reference point from which you can learn all you need to know about him or her. It’s even better than a Google search. Visitors are always amazed at our high school graduations, and how they’re filled with mountains of leis and endless picture-taking. Yet they cannot even begin to appreciate just how significant this local rite of passage is without experiencing it as a student or a parent. Having just done so with my daughter, all I can say is that I should have spent the last year planning her graduation instead of worrying about her college applications.

From a business perspective, even Hallmark couldn’t have done a better job of creating an annual, money-generating event. The first inkling I had of how clueless I was came when my daughter’s mentioned a few months ago that she’d like to have a graduation party at the beach. No problem, I thought, a dozen or so of her friends and some Costco hamburgers and hotdogs at Ala Moana Park; but when the guest list began hovering around 100 people, the printing of invitations needed to be done, and a caterer and a private site had to be found, I began to realize that my high school graduation back in New Jersey 35 years ago was not a good frame of reference. Back then, who knew that graduation announcements had to be printed, a photographer hired to take special graduation photos, 150 4x6” color prints in special folders ordered for friends and family, and a graduation dinner hosted.

I mentioned this to a couple of my buddies over breakfast one morning. One graduated from public high school on a neighbor island while the other graduated from a large private school in Honolulu. Both looked at me pathetically when I expressed my befuddlement over all this graduation hoopla. They explained patiently how, in a small plantation community, a high school graduation was the seminal coming of age event, a rite of passage for the whole community, most of whom had known all of the students all their lives, while for the students this was the time when they would be leaving home perhaps for good, their last chance to spend time with their classmates and their families. I still wasn’t sure, though, why this should be different from any high school graduation anywhere else.

Maybe it was the mounds of graduation announcements, photos, and party invitations that spilled over all our table space, or the vast assortment of ribbons strewn about the house to make special leis for her closest friends that convinced me. Or maybe it was the last minute rush the day of graduation to make the dozens of candy leis to be given to her classmates and a sign so people could find us among the celebrating hordes, and the rest of the 14 hours of non-stop graduation activities that only ended when we dropped our daughter back at school for her class’s all-night graduation party. Or maybe it was just how she glowed at graduation. Whatever it was, I finally understood how big a deal this is in Hawaii and why. The rest of the world doesn’t know what it’s missing.

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