My Sunday column

My nephew Brannon graduated from the University of West Georgia last Saturday.
West Georgia is also my alma mater and I have many fond memories of the place ... some of which I cannot detail in a family newspaper.
I also have some not-so-fond memories of West Georgia, the latest coming last Saturday when I had to get up at 5:15 a.m. on a weekend to make the trip for a 9 a.m. graduation ceremony. Let me tell you, the only thing 5:15 a.m. is good for is sleeping and commando raids. As Bill Cosby once said, if you’re sneaking around at 5:15 a.m. and you run into someone you know, don’t worry. They’re sneaking too.”
The original plan was for seven members of my clan to load up in my niece Kasey’s SUV and ride together. Kasey assured me that there was enough room. Kasey fibbed.
There wasn’t enough room and at the last minute yours truly was dragooned into driving. Of course the whole point of us going with Kasey was so that I wouldn’t have to drive, but drive I did. We had gone to Summer-ville on Friday and stayed the night there so we would be up and ready to jump in someone else’s vehicle bright and early for the trip. Instead, I stumbled behind the wheel of my own vehicle.
Riding with me were my older brother, Greg, and my stepdad, Ken.
Ken is the quiet type and not much of a complainer. Greg, on the other hand, complains loudly and constantly. “Speed up.” “Slow down.” “Watch that curve!” “You’re on the wrong road!” It’s endless.
But as irritating as his mouthing off is, his more aggravating tactic is the dramatic gasp.
He is the master of sucking in wind and putting his hand over his face protectively, like when one of those starlets in an old horror movie first sees the werewolf. Of course it’s funny when he does it to some other driver, but when you’re on the end of this drama queen treatment it can be maddening ... particularly when the original plan called for you to sleep all the way to Carrollton.
We arrived at the University of West Georgia safe and sound, despite my brother’s fevered fears, and entered the school’s fancy new gymnasium.
What an impressive facility!
At least that’s what I thought until I sat down and realized I was sitting in a seat designed for a man about 50 pounds lighter and three inches shorter than me. Now look, I’m not one of those fat people who goes through life bellyaching about how us tubbies are being persecuted. I got fat and now I am paying the price. I get that. But why in this day and age, when a large portion of the American public looks more like me than Clay Aiken, would they keeping designing seats for the average American male, circa 1853?
I squeezed into my terrorist interrogation device/seat and waited for the Big Show to commence.
Eventually it did, but not before I realized how hot, sleepy, hungry and uncomfortable I was.
The pasteboard sausage biscuit I had choked down on the road lurched around in my stomach while the neck tattoo on the young lady in front of me began to alter shapes, or at least it did in my discombobulated brain. My crisis of sanity was not helped by my daughter/pet monkey, who kept climbing into my lap and kicking me in the calves.
Finally, the graduates and faculty came in and took their seats. The orchestra played. The president of the university, who had the kind of jaunty accent you associate with a Kipling character, made a speech that included quotes from Kipling. (The man knew his strengths).
Just then my daughter kicked me again, my brother and step dad hogged the arm rests and my wife flashed me one of the unprovoked “You jerk” looks she periodically sends at me just for kicks.
That’s when I jumped up, screamed a profanity and stormed out of the building.
Just kidding.
Actually what happened next was even better.
My nephew, James Thomas Brannon Espy — son of my younger brother Tommy and as good a kid as ever drew a breath — walked across that stage and received a diploma for which he had worked his butt off for almost five years. Magna Cum Laude, baby!
And just like that, there wasn’t a better place to be than Carrollton, Ga., on a Saturday morning in May.

Jimmy Espy is executive editor of The Daily Citizen. He graduated from West Georgia in 1985, followed by cousin Jason (Class of 1996), niece Kasey (2006) and Brannon.