Matriculation

Matriculation is not a word you hear everyday, unless, of course, you grew up with my dad. My dad is notorious for his use of words like matriculate and ubiquitous. As a matter of fact, on more than one occasion I caught him reading the dictionary just to learn new words to confuse us with. Needless to say, we had opportunities to celebrate things during our growing up years that other kids may not have celebrated simply because our dad knew that there was a word for such an event. Matriculation was one of those events that occurred every summer in our home. 

To matriculate, for those of you who haven't yet clicked over to Dictionary.com, typically refers to enrolling in college or a specific course of study, but it can also mean to reach an academic standard. In the setting of the American school system, that standard is the completion of a grade level. Dad was always careful to distinguish between graduation and matriculation. Graduation was something that occurred at the end of junior high or high school. All other grades culminated in a matriculation. 

Fortunately, there were lots of opportunities to matriculate during our educational careers, so we had plenty of chances to capitalize on those events. The whole matriculation tradition began the summer after I finished second grade. Somehow I had managed to figure out all the borrowing and carrying and was being passed on to third grade. My younger brother was moving up to second and my older brother was moving on to fourth grade. It was at the start of this summer that Dad thought it would be a good idea to get us our first matriculation gift. 

I remember that night quite vividly. The gift was in a long narrow box and we were clueless. When we opened it, we found a blue canvas bag with more blue canvas inside. Still clueless. "It's a tent," Dad said. "Let's set it up." So we did. I can't remember exactly how we did it because this was an old-fashioned Boy Scout-type tent that had to be staked to the ground in order to be set up. Since we were on the green shag carpet next to the yellow floral couch in the living room, I'm not sure how we pulled it off, but we did.

I remember climbing inside that tiny blue tent that night with my brothers and playing in it right there in the living room, completely clueless about the fact that in a matter of weeks the three of us would be sleeping inside it up in the mountains as the adults sat around a camp fire telling stories about the last time a bear came into camp. 

That summer was the first time my family went on vacation to Lake Almanor in Northern California. It's been about thirty years since that matriculation gift and camping trip and the tradition continues today, only now I'm the dad and my kids are in the tent.