Dame Wilburn

My father died the sophomore year that I was in college.

And this made me

the sole focus of my mother, the dragon.

Now, she got that name because she wanted me to be a free spirit, but she was never prepared when I did free spirited stuff.

And she would always respond to these moments with volcanic levels of fury that could only be described as dragon-esque.

She was 5'10 and heels.

She kept her talons sharpened.

She would wear $2,000 worth of power suits and accoutrements.

And she would smoke under no smoking signs for kicks.

She also once sent a man a pink slip.

He was in a coma.

And she sent it to the hospital and had his wife sign for it.

This is the woman whose eyes are boring into the back of my head as I sit at my graduation with my diploma holder trembling in my hand.

This holder and I have a secret, and we learned this secret about three months ago when my counselor said I was a few credits short of graduating.

I was 15 credits short of graduating.

Now, if you don't go to college and don't understand what that means, that's a semester.

So I had somehow managed to be in school for five years and still be a semester short of graduating.

Thank you.

Some of y'all get it.

And it was also at that meeting that she told me that if you weren't graduating until the fall, you could walk in the spring.