So it was like a strange season finale, this going down to see my parents and my brother on his class day, though I missed most of the good material, I'm told. The strange moments include my parents paying for a restaurant meal (though not knowing what to do with the slips or the book-thingie) and my dad breaking out crying over his near-quarter-century of cruelty toward me. Or something. I also met the cousins, including the one a decade older than us who was disowned for going with some Indian girl, but who's since come to his senses, moved home, and is dating and about to wed a white woman. Go cousin! Ummmm, yeah...

But the best moments were during the departmental graduation ceremony during which the departmental valedictorian who happens to be Asian had the following said of him, "When he was a freshman, we called him Ho. And he came to me an announced, 'I want to be called "Anderson"' but I continued to call him 'Ho' because I liked it better. But when he got the highest score on all of his tests, he earned the name 'Anderson'." That, and when my dad started crying on the platform, my mom said to him, "Don't cry in front of the black people."