Pandemic Graduation – Surprise, the Ex is Still an Asshole

My youngest son has graduated high school. Thanks to COVID-19 (aka the pandemic) the graduation ceremony was first cancelled, then postponed, then it evolved into this weird drive-thru event at a race track. 

Back in early March, before society went down the crapper, I had sent the ex a text, asking if he was planning to attend his son’s graduation at the end of May.

At first he was like, yes! send him the details, He will be there! Nothing will keep him away.

The pandemic strikes

A few weeks later, the NY tri-state area resembled a post-apocalyptic war zone of disease, and the shut downs began throughout various states. No one knew how long these might last.

The ex then sent a text immediately backing out of his promise to be in attendance at the graduation.

“I might not be able to fly out of there by end of May. Philly airport…just disease city.”

the ex via text

I find that text ironic because two days ago, as the date of the new graduation event loomed on the horizon, the ex sent a text letting me know to check the mail because he had sent a post-graduation gift in the mail.

Seeing that he rarely chooses to communicate with me, I stupidly took the opportunity to ask how he and his woman were doing. I immediately regretted this decision because he proceeded to whine about how he was tired of working from home.

“The whole thing is ridiculous. We’re working from home for the foreseeable future, but it is totally unnecessary. Kung Flu. Nobody is getting sick around here that isn’t in a nursing home.”

the ex via text

Really. Suddenly he’s an expert on virology and believes that everyone is reporting the truth about who is or isn’t getting sick? And I didn’t even want to acknowledge the racially charged name for the virus he threw in there all nonchalant.

I was at a loss, how do I respond to this ignorant complaint?

Mea culpa, I forgot who I was talking to

I wanted to rant and tell him: why not continue to bitch about how you have a job that affords you the luxury of working from home indefinitely? To have the privilege to remain in safety and not have to take unnecessary risks if you don’t want to?

Not like there are millions of people who can’t work whether or not if they want to, or who lost their jobs because the business they worked for chose to let all their people go without medical benefits in the middle of a pandemic. Not like millions of people just one day didn’t have a means of an income and had to figure out what to do to live practically overnight.

I was lucky enough to have a job that tried to keep us on the payroll as long as possible, but eventually even they had to furlough all non-salaried employees. Not that I shared any of my struggles with him. For starters, it’s none of his business. Secondly, he wouldn’t have cared, as demonstrated by his selfish laments about having to work from his cushy house. Wah wah. Crybaby.

Your white privilege is showing

I had to put my phone down and walk away without responding to him. I caught myself before I fell into old patterns of placating him like it was somehow my fault that shit wasn’t going his way. I really had to fight my urge to apologize and try to make him feel better about having to work from home.

This is what he did. He would manipulate me into becoming his punching bag. When the truth is, he just didn’t want to feel bad about his bad decisions, it was much better to deflect the blame.

Then when whatever he mailed didn’t arrive on the day he expected, he proceeded to throw a shit fit about that:

“Everyone is using this fucking virus as an excuse not to do their job”.

the ex via text

Sounds like a shitbag complaint to me. Or maybe he speaks from personal experience because he’s using this virus as an excuse to not do his job? Is there some subconscious guilt in there that he’s projecting?

Because it isn’t possible that the reason that the package isn’t here on time is because he chose to be cheap and not send it priority mail? Thereby increasing the likelihood that it would be delivered in a more timely fashion, considering that there is a global pandemic affecting all logistic channels? Or the fact that he waited until the last minute to send this gift out? No. None of that is on him.

“I can’t be there for his graduation, and I can’t even get a card delivered on time.”

the ex via text

Oddly enough, he could have done both. There’s a guy I work with that flew back to Maryland to see his parents. Sure he had to delay returning to work to check for symptoms, but he did it.

The ex could have not waited until 3 days before his son’s graduation to send a gift. A graduation he has known about for 3 months. A graduation that he knew 3 months ago, he wasn’t planning to attend.

If there was one good thing that came out of this pandemic is being able to avoid the awkward and stressful encounters with the ex. In my most nightmarish of nightmares I imagined that he brought the other woman with him to my son’s graduation. I don’t know how I would have reacted to that surprise. On the plus side, the ex watched the graduation remotely via YouTube and I didn’t have to be present for what would have been a butt ton of racial slurs and comments on the predominately Hispanic student body.

Pandemic potential

Overall it was probably the best graduation I have been to (including my own). Social distancing meant we were not forced to sit hip to shoulder with hundreds of gross strangers.

The parents were to stay in their cars, and we were escorted to park in the redneck Mecca: infield on the Nascar motorway.

And the speeches were blessedly cut shorter than they could have been. Though I admit, I didn’t pay too much attention to them as most were celebrity videos offering congratulations, so who gives a fuck about what they have to say. The Governor gave a speech which was more nonsensical generalized rambling that had no relevance to my son’s graduating class. I admit to playing Animal Crossing Pocket Camp during all this until they got to the good stuff.

We watched the procession of students graduate on the jumbotron. When it was all over, we were not forced to mingle. In fact, any loitering was discouraged and they couldn’t have shown everyone the exit lanes any faster.

I didn’t have to greet any other parents whose child I may or may not have known. I didn’t have to say hello to any of the teachers my son probably hated. It was fairly quick.

Congratulations, son. You did it. With little, to no, excessive fanfare too. Very 2020.