She's ready for her close up, Mr. DeMille.

So I love being reminded that smart does not necessarily mean intelligent.

As I've mentioned before, my sister is graduating from high school in a couple weeks. She is one of the brightest minds that our yokel Amish school district has ever produced, so she is getting all sorts of accolades and awards. One of the perks is she gets to be in those Salute to Graduate commercials on local TV, the one where all the promising young scholars pose in their cap and gown, all full of hope and ambition. (I think a much better commercial would be all those kids four years from now, when they have properly learned how to do a keg stand and how to remove puke stains from a lace camisole).

I drove Katelyn up to Cleveland to make her television debut. She actually looked very good in her little white gown (and she met a cute boy from Orrville, poor thing had no idea where that was). The final shot of the day was all of the kids together, throwing their hats in the air in the time-honored tradition. The kids were all tired (they had to be there at 8) and the director wanted to do it in one take. The director yells "Action!" and the kids all grab their hats and launch them into the air. It was quite moving actually--until the hats came down and the kids start pushing and shoving and tripping over themselves to get their hats back--while the camera was still rolling. So the director asked that the kids do it again, but this time wait until he yells "Cut!" to retrieve them. They set themselves up again, ready to toss the cap again. Only this time, because they were afraid they were going to lose the hat because they couldn't go get it right away, all one hundred or so of them either tossed their hats lightly two or three feet in the air or tossed it to the side or in front of them. This take was slightly less awe-inspiring than the first one. "Cut!" the director yelled again, clearly frustrated with the best and the brightest of Northern Ohio. He came down from his little scaffolding and approached my sister, who was near the front. He asked for her cap and she gave it to him. "Like this!" he yelled and threw the cap in the air with the gusto that only a character in a bad afterschool special about overcoming adversity to graduate top of his class could muster. He handed the cap back to my sister and said "Let me see you try." Determined to do her school, her family, the whole cotton-picking town proud, Katelyn took a deep breath, pulled down her arm and flung her cap: right into the eye of the cute guy from Orrville.

Half and hour later or so, the director finally got the shot he wanted, with Katelyn far to the right, and the boy from Orrville toward the back so that people could not see his swollen eye.