The day before graduation, there was a “Senior Appreciation Event” in the auditorium, a tradition at The Big Brown Box where the administration and staff got on stage and we all reminisced like one big happy family. At least, for the most part.
The event was a chance for the seniors to hear some “thank you and farewell” speeches from the people who did most of the actual work at the school—the cafeteria ladies and custodians (who got the usual standing ovations), Frank the groundskeeper (who also got a standing ovation thanks to my jumping right to my feet when he was introduced), and all the overworked, probably underpaid office secretaries. For that reason alone, the event was pretty well attended, with only a few no-shows.
That, plus they gave us unlimited snacks on long tables in the back of the room, which meant we weren’t above being bribed to attend.
Before they started the tradition, the day before graduation was an unofficial Senior Ditch Day, which the administration fought hopelessly to squelch. Senior Appreciation Day was one of the administration’s rare good ideas that everyone actually liked and served a useful purpose. What was particularly amusing was that when all the usual high-level suspects got up and spoke—Principal Morgan, the school district superintendent and the other bigwigs—the seniors had their own tradition of folding their arms and not applauding. Yeah, the silent treatment was rude, but it was our last chance to protest some of their insane policies that made our lives miserable and theirs easier. It was satisfying in a cringe-worthy sort of way to watch Morgan and the others finish their speeches and go sit back down in you-could-hear-a-pin-drop complete silence—especially after all the whistles and stomps we gave the school workers—but frankly, that’s the way it went. And yeah, they deserved it.
Needless to say, Dave was eagerly looking forward to the event. At least he was, until the administration showed a particular video I had forgotten all about for the entire graduating class to see.
“And finally, we’ve got a special treat for everyone,” Morgan said innocently enough after everyone on stage had spoken. “It’s someone you know, sending us all an important message. Watch.” He went back to his chair.
And with that, the auditorium lights went down, the projector in the back of the room turned on, and all eyes focused on the big screen on the front wall.
At first all you could see was an empty classroom, with rows of motionless chairs. Some of us looked at each other and gave a little shrug, unsure what this was all about. And then, rising up as if from the depths was Dave’s face, gigantic and scowling, just inches away from the camera.
My jaw literally dropped when it hit me all at once that it was Dave’s security camera rant back at the start of the school year.
I don’t think there was any way the administration could have exacted a bigger revenge on Dave than by showing what followed, although I doubt that was their intention. And even though there was no sound, it wasn’t hard to read Dave’s lips and follow along with every curse, foul word, threat, and innuendo for the next five long minutes.
The class not only roared with laughter, they were beside themselves.
Sitting right next to me, Dave looked like he had just been hit in the forehead with the proverbial two-by-four.
“Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no,” he said, and then began to gradually slide lower and lower in his chair until I thought he might slide off and disappear completely.
I would have shown some concern for Dave’s reaction—and probably should have—only I was laughing uncontrollably myself. I think what made it so incredibly amusing was that you could see the administration sitting there onstage beneath that silently ranting Dave just smiling at each other and at us, totally clueless as to what it was it was that ranting Dave was mouthing, as if they had no idea at all how to read lips and this was just some cute video they’d found of precious kittens playing the piano or something like that, not an endless stream of all too obvious four-letter words.
The whole thing was so incongruous, I had to wonder if they had even bothered to preview what they were showing.
I finally had to look away from the spectacle so I didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen, that’s how hard I was laughing. Through tear-filled eyes, I could see others had to do the same.
When ranting Dave on the big screen gave his pair of obscene gestures to wrap things up, the entire audience doubled over as if on cue.
I knew for certain then that Morgan and the others hadn’t really paid attention to the recording; they couldn’t possibly have known that was coming.
But then, for just a few curious seconds, I stopped laughing and wondered if the administration did preview it and knew we would find it funny because even though we were graduating, in a lot of ways we were still kids. Maybe they were letting us have one last immature laugh because they knew this was it, that from this day forward things were going to have to change, that we were going to have to grow up sooner rather than later and put all our childish behavior behind us. But with everyone around me still rocking with laughter, I decided this wasn’t the time to be so serious and laughed along with them again.
And then, mercifully—for Dave, anyway—the film came to an end. Morgan got up and went back to the podium as the audience caught its breath and began to settle down.
“We thought you might like that,” he said, starting a fresh round of laughter. “Now how about a nice round of applause for the star of the film, Mr. David Baker!”
By this time, Dave had slid so far down in his chair only his head was visible.
Not only did the class spring to their feet to cheer, they began chanting Dave’s name. The chants started in one corner of the auditorium and quickly spread.
Sitting right in front of Dave, a nerd whose name I could never remember turned around and gave two enthusiastic thumbs up at Dave’s low face. Dave stared up at the thumbs as if in disbelief.
And then there was a slow change in Dave’s demeanor. His look of utter shock and horror gave way to a thoughtful, almost pensive expression, and he began to slide back up in his chair as if pulled by some mysterious force. As the chanting continued, Dave rose to his feet and a grin appeared that blossomed in a full-fledged smile, almost as though he had decided the best thing to do was just accept the accolades.
He stood up on the chair the way he did in that classroom months earlier when the video was recorded, raising his arms like a prizefighter victorious in the ring. As he shook his fists and gave a rebel yell, the crowd cheered all the louder.
Dave in all his glory, indeed.
“That ends our program, everyone,” Morgan said, still at the podium. “See you tomorrow at graduation.”
As the cheers died down and we filtered out of the auditorium—a happy, noisy, kind of bouncy bunch now—Dave was swarmed by well-wishers who patted his back and shook his hand, as if everyone wanted to be like Dave.
“I feel sorry for those who ditched and missed this,” someone said, wiping his still-teary eyes. “That was even more epic than last week’s fake fight.”
And so, at the end, Dave joined the ranks of those immortalized at The Big Brown Box, his exploits likely to be exaggerated with each generation until he achieved near mythical status.
If anyone deserved that fate, it was larger-than-life Dave.
Graduation day started out hectic. Kenny, Dad, and I went out for breakfast, to a restaurant that was packed with cheerful near-graduates and their families. While the mood was festive, we had to wait quite a while for a table, which meant once we were done we had to rush home so we could start getting ready. I tried on my graduation robe and found out it was badly wrinkled. Fortunately, they told us during rehearsal to hang it in the bathroom when we took a shower to steam it a bit, and that would smooth it out enough to make it look presentable. That little trick worked.
After putting on my dress pants and shirt, I slipped on the robe and put the mortar board on to see the finished product in the mirror behind the bathroom door. There was something a little unsettling about the way I looked, as if I were staring at someone other than myself, somebody far more advanced and mature than the more familiar guy under the robe. Today was one of those rare major life transitions as I knew full well, and just like a time traveler stopping for a spell in his machine to see what had changed, I tried to memorize every detail of the near-stranger in front of me so when time resumed and I raced into the future, I would always remember what I looked like just a few short hours before I was handed my diploma and became an ex-high school student, the transition now complete.
Next to the mirror on the door frame was a faint pencil line with a two-letter word written above it that I hadn’t paid attention to in years. I wasn’t sure if anyone else had ever noticed it—if they did, they probably didn’t think it was important enough to even mention. Back when I was seven years old, I had stood with my back pressed up against the frame and, as best I could, drew a short line to record my height, then added the word “me” on top. I had only done that once—what compelled me, I have no idea—and now that, too, was a snapshot in time.
I touched the line as if to bridge the gap between who I was then and who I was now, thinking of all the time that had raced by in between. My mom before she died, Kenny still a baby, high school just a distant dream . . . the line was about two feet lower than my current height, which probably wasn’t going to change much no matter how long I lived. It was difficult to remember how the world looked to me back then. It must have seemed a whole lot bigger, infinite at that age, the future filled with limitless possibilities.
There was a knock at the door that yanked me back to the present.
“Yes?” I asked, pulling the door open.
“Perfect! You’re ready,” my dad said, “Hold it right there.”
And the camera he was holding went up fast to his face, followed by a bright flash as he took my picture.
Now I had an actual snapshot of the moment, I thought, although I was certain I would never need to look at it to remember.
So we piled into the car for the short ride to the school—my last official one—the day breezy but sunny, the sun brighter somehow than I ever remembered it being. We drove in blissful silence, the trip like a waking dream. After four eventful years, the last one in particular, it was all coming down to this. I savored the trip, studying the familiar landmarks as we went by, knowing I would never view them quite the same way again.
We had to park in the far lot near where Dave always parked. I saw his car in its usual spot and realized with a twinge of sadness it would likely never be there again.
I sighed, wondering if I was going to wallow in nostalgia all day. I hoped not.
We walked the too-familiar route to the school. What was different this time was having Kenny and Dad with me rather than Dave and Onion.
“This is the way I walked to school every day, Kenny, rain or shine,” I announced, pointing forward to The Big Brown Box, still reminiscing and sick of it already.
People streamed into the school from all directions, those wearing a robe like mine appearing now and then. When people saw me, they smiled and offered me heartfelt congratulations—some of them with actual tears in their eyes—even though I had no idea who they were or why they were already so emotional when the ceremony hadn’t even begun.
The stream turned into a boisterous crowd in the gymnasium. All the kid brothers and sisters were dressed in their finest, parents walked by with bouquets of flowers, searching for the best place to sit together, and balloons bobbed at the ends of their strings here and there above the loud sea of churning people. Add to that the sound of the school band tuning up, and the noise was incredible.
We reached the back of the audience chairs.
“Dad, I have to go join up with the other grads.”
I practically had to shout to be heard.
“Okay,” he replied, just as loud. “When it’s over, wait by the side doors. Kenny and I will go get the car and pick you up. It might take a while. You know how pokey Kenny can be.”
“Okay.”
And Dad and Kenny were swallowed up by the forward crush of the crowd.
Since my last name started with a W, I was in the second row from the front. While that meant I would have a great view of the commencement stage, it also meant my name would be among the last to be called.
In the hallway, it was impossible in the long, snaky line of grads standing two by two to catch a glimpse of either Dave or Onion, although I hadn’t really expected to. Still, I looked.
“Lose somebody, George?” Carl Wentworth asked as he took his place next to me.
“No, just looking for a couple of friends.”
“Well, forget it. Wait ’til it’s over. This is a madhouse.”
Wentworth was right, of course. Dave and Onion and I had a plan to meet by the south doors after the ceremony, a former emergency exit that led nowhere. Since nobody ever went out that way, we figured that would be the best place to meet up and escape unscathed.
Shortly after one o’clock we heard the slightly off-key strains of some song the school band started playing in the gym, our cue to get going.
We all followed a scrawny-looking underclassman in a red robe who struggled mightily to carry a large American flag on a long pole. Next to him was a muscular underclassman in a blue robe carrying a brass bell. Why their roles weren’t reversed I didn’t have a clue.
Once our robed guides entered the gym, they came to an abrupt halt. There was a mild pileup of grads behind them, which soon straightened out.
The bell-ringer rang the bell three times, and the band abandoned the song they were playing in favor of “Pomp and Circumstance,” which they played much better.
We entered to a standing ovation, nearly deafening in its intensity.
I took my seat, listening to “Pomp and Circumstance” play over and over again as my fellow classmates made their way in. It seemed to take forever just to get everybody seated.
I had lost track of the flag-bearer, then spotted the flag on the stage next to the wooden lectern. After Principal Morgan and the rest of the dignitaries climbed the stage steps and lined up in front of their chairs, from somewhere offstage the bell rang again and the crowd fell mostly silent.
Morgan stepped up to the microphone. “Please rise for the singing of the national anthem.”
Everyone stood, the grads slipped off their mortar caps, we all sang as the band tried to accompany us, and then we put our caps back on and sat down for the long haul.
The ceremony itself was kind of a blur. The commencement speaker wasn’t nearly as funny as he thought, whoever he was, his jokes not making a lot of sense or maybe just going way over our heads. The only ones who actually laughed were the others on the stage and a smattering of adults in the audience.
And then they started reading the names. I was surprised at how fast they read them, the graduates streaming across the stage at almost a frantic pace. Even Dave and Onion were hardly up there for long. I tried to discreetly catch their attention, but they just motored on off the other side with hardly a glance the audience’s way. That was a little disappointing, but at least Dave didn’t make a scene in some final act of defiance, so that was a big relief.
The school had warned the audience multiple times not to shout out or otherwise disrupt the ceremony when the names were read, under penalty of instant death or something, so there was hardly a peep throughout. Finally it was my row’s turn to get up and go stand by the steps. As I grew closer and closer to the stage, things kind of took on a surreal feeling, like this wasn’t really happening. I wouldn’t call it an out-of-body experience or anything like that, but I had to consciously order my uncooperative, suddenly jello legs to move when my turn arrived.
“George Rodney Wells.”
One leg forward. The other leg forward. Repeat. Shake Morgan’s hand. Smile like you mean it. Now four more steps. Take diploma from some really serious, rather scary-looking guy. (Diploma!) Smile again. Keep those legs moving and walk down the steps on the other side without falling flat on your face or otherwise embarrassing yourself.
Mission accomplished, I relaxed on my way back to my seat, my legs operating normally again. Once there, I opened my diploma and read the first few lines:
DIPLOMA OF GRADUATION
This Is To Certify That
George Rodney Wells
Has Hereby Satisfied All Requirements For Graduation
As Prescribed By The Board Of Education
I closed it and set it carefully on my lap as if it were fragile, like a priceless Picasso or something.
After a few closing remarks—mainly to warn the audience not to block the recessional so we weren’t all stuck in the gym—the band struck up another song and we were on our way. The audience noise returned with a vengeance after an hour and a half of nearly complete silence, and dozens of cameras and phones held high flashed at us from all directions. We had to kind of waddle our way out, hemmed in on either side by family and friends desperately looking for their special graduate.
In the crush, I didn’t see either my dad or Kenny, not that I really expected to.
As soon as I saw a narrow gap in the crowd out in the lobby, I said goodbye to Wentworth and broke free to head to the south exit doors.
Dave and Onion were both there, comparing their diplomas and grinning like little kids with brand new toys. They were still wearing their caps. I had yanked mine off and tucked it under my arm as soon the recessional ended.
Before they could even ask, I opened my diploma as if to prove that I had actually graduated, too.
“Awesome,” Onion said.
“Finally,” Dave said, looking down at his own diploma. “There’s my name. My name. It’s finished, and not a moment too soon.”
He clutched his diploma to his chest and threw his head back with an overly dramatic, deep sigh of relief as only Dave could do.
We could hear the muffled sound of hundreds of voices grow fainter as the festivities moved outside.
“Are we ready for it?” Dave asked.
“Ready,” Onion and I replied.
“Great. Let’s do this,” Dave said.
We marched around the corner into the deserted cafeteria, right up to our now former table to pay a final homage.
Dave saluted and clicked his heels. “Thank you for your fine service, Table One and Table Two. You shall always be remembered.”
Onion laughed and shook her head. “Well, that’s just ridiculous. Like you said, it’s only a table, isn’t it?” But then she stepped forward and gave it a few gentle pats. “Thanks,” was all she said.
I glanced around the cafeteria for a final look, the serving area dark and still, the chairs empty and mute. It was hard to imagine that the place would no longer be a part of our daily routine.
From the hallway came three young guys wearing dress shirts with collars open and neckties loose. I thought I recognized them as freshmen, kind of poised but kind of not.
They came up to us with overly serious expressions.
“Just so you know, we’re taking this table next year,” one of them said.
Why they felt they had to tell us I had no idea. I guess they just wanted to make it official or something.
“Who are you?” Dave asked.
“We’ll be sophomores next year,” their spokesman continued. He had a straggly goatee that was no match for Dave’s fuller facial hair, but at least it was a start. “My sister just graduated. Now that the three of you graduated, too, this table is ours.” He tapped on it. All three of them wore a defiant look.
“Is that so?” Dave said. “What makes you think you’re worthy?”
Leave it to Dave to mess with them, I thought. They didn’t have to explain anything to us.
“Because we’ll continue the fight against the system, that’s why,” their spokesman said. He shook a fist. “They’re not going to keep us down, man.”
Dave’s tough guy stance immediately softened. “Oh. Actually, that’s a great answer.”
He pulled his chair out from behind the table.
“Are you the ringleader? Here, take my chair.”
“Wait a minute,” Onion said, pulling her chair out, too. “If he’s their leader, he wants my chair.”
The three young guys looked surprised that we were so willing to acquiesce, not that we had any real choice.
All three of them sat down and smiled as they touched the tabletop, like they were claiming a throne or something.
Dave stepped back and nodded. “Looking good,” he said. Then his voice dropped. “Good luck, guys. Just . . . take good care of it for us, will you?” He patted the tabletop the same way Onion had. “It helped us get through.”
They nodded solemnly.
We turned and headed back to the south exit. I took a brief glance at the three of them sitting there as we rounded the corner. They were laughing and clowning around now like the three of us used to do, and I had the gratifying sense we were leaving our beloved table in excellent hands.
The seldom-used exit doors didn’t want to open at first. Dave gave one of the stubborn panic bars a hard hip shove and the three of us spilled outside.
Onion shaded her eyes from the sun. “Wow, it’s bright out here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”
Dave shook his diploma at us. “I wouldn’t care if there was lightning, hail, and tornadoes all at the same time, it would still be a beautiful day now that we’ve got these.”
The stoop we were standing on was barely big enough for the three of us. Since it was an exit that led nowhere, there was no connecting sidewalk or really anywhere to go. There was a big step down to some loose gravel and then rows of overgrown thorn bushes that blocked us in. I seemed to remember that there was a path between them to the parking lot years ago, but clearly not anymore.
The only thing we could do was go back in.
I tugged on the door handles. “Uh oh.”
“Uh oh, what?” Onion asked.
“It’s locked. We’re locked out.” I tugged frantically again as if that would make any difference, and then peered through the thick glass at the long rows of now empty lockers. There was no one in sight who could let us back in.
“Dude,” Dave said. “Don’t.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We don’t have any business in there anymore. It’s all over, remember? We’re alumni now.”
The finality of it sank in right then, even though I always knew this day was coming. I stared a bit longer at the inside of our now former school. The once familiar hallway suddenly seemed foreboding, like the entrance to the Morlocks’ underground workshop at the end of The Movie when that other George fights them single-handedly to get his time machine back and escape their grasp.
I turned around to face our new problem. Our own escape wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, either.
“So what do we do now? There’s no way out.”
Dave looked resolute. “There will be. I’ll make one. Follow me.”
And with that, Dave jumped off the landing and went crashing through the bushes. Onion and I followed behind as Dave plowed through them like an icebreaker clearing a path. We could hear the frequent and alarming sound of fabric ripping and an occasional faint cry from Dave as the thorns on the bushes struck home.
“Are you okay, Dave?”
“Never better,” he said to the sound of another fabric rip. “Ouch.”
We broke through to The Hill on the south side of the building where only a few other grads stood waiting for their rides home. No one seemed to notice our sudden appearance out of nowhere, as if a time machine had just deposited us there.
“Oh, man.” Dave turned around to face us. “Look at this.”
What we saw left us speechless. On the front and sides, Dave’s robe was in tatters, with big chunks missing.
“You know what? If this is the price I have to pay to finally get out of here, it’s worth it,” he said, then pulled the robe off and wadded it up. A slender strip from it went fluttering to the ground.
In a show of solidarity, Onion and I took our robes off and wadded them up, too.
“Give them to me,” Onion said. “Your caps, too. I see someone who can return them for us.”
She waved at a girl walking down the sidewalk with her own robe and cap in a neatly folded bundle.
“Suzie? Suzie! Are you returning your robe?”
“Oh, hi, Nancy! Yes, I am.”
“Would you mind taking ours, too?” She smiled overly bright.
Suzie grimaced when she saw the big black ball of robes Onion was holding.
“Uh . . . okay,” Suzie replied, but her eyes said she wasn’t too happy about it.
Onion handed over the robes and Suzie nearly staggered away, trying to see where she was going over the tall, bulky load. Another long sliver of Dave’s robe blew away in the breeze.
A boxy yellow car sputtered up the drive and screeched to a halt at the bottom of the steps.
Onion hardly needed to shade her eyes and peer down the hill to know who it was. “Yep. That’s my ride.”
“Call us tonight if you’re not busy,” I said. “We’ll figure out something to do.”
“Sure,” was all Onion replied, and promptly headed down the steps to the car. She gave us a brief “toodle-oo” wave of her fingers over her shoulders but didn’t look back.
We watched Onion and her mom drive away, and that was that.
Another car soon arrived and picked up the few other new grads waiting for their ride. The only ones left now were me and Dave. We stood silently side by side, enjoying the pleasant day and lost in dreams of days gone by.
Or so I thought.
To my surprise, Dave suddenly grabbed my shoulder and turned me to face him, his gaze intense as if angry about something.
“All right,” he said. “Before I leave, we have to have a little talk.”
“We do? About what?” I asked, even more surprised.
“Filby.”
I searched Dave’s face for some clue as to what he meant. None was there.
“So? What about him?”
“I’ll tell you what about him. For years I‘ve had to listen to you moan and whine and complain about how you didn’t have a Filby, nobody really loyal or worthy like that. Well, you know what? I’ve been way better to you than Filby ever was to George the time traveler and you know it. Who went out of his way to drive you to and from school nearly every day? Who helped you pass Physics with a pretty good grade? Prevented the cheerleaders from beating you up when you wrecked the football field? Saved you from being hit in the head by a flaming board when the bonfire blew up and then protected you from the angry bonfire builders? Helped bail you out of jail? Made you feel better when you thought you burned down The Post? Put up with all those silly movie reenactments? Took you to a drag race so you could win fifty bucks? I did, that’s who. If you’ve been waiting for the perfect friend, you can just keep on waiting the rest of your life because nobody’s perfect, not even your imaginary Filby. Maybe I do have some kind of mood disorder or something like that, but I’ve been there for you whenever you needed me, which is more than you can say about anyone else, not even Onion. Don’t ever mention Filby’s name to me again, you understand?”
To my further surprise, beneath Dave’s ireful appearance I saw brief flashes of dismay and hurt in his eyes. Even his tone conveyed them.
“Sure, Dave. I’ll never mention him again. Sorry. Just . . . sorry.”
Dave nodded and stepped back, but I could see he was still upset.
“Fine. Good. I’m leaving. Maybe I’ll see you tonight,” he said, as if that were far from a sure thing. “And I’m angry that I even had to remind you what a good friend I’ve been.”
He turned and started down The Hill.
“Wait!”
Dave stopped and turned around, his expression still dark.
I always thought it would be years before I would say what I was about to say, waiting for just the right person and just the right time to say it. But what Dave said about perfection was spot on and I knew it, that if I was waiting for the perfect friend then that moment was never going to come. With a sudden clarity of mind I had never had before, I finally realized that right there, right then, with this very special friend in front of me, the time had arrived.
I took a deep breath, knowing what I was about to say was going to change everything forever.
“Thanks for being such a good friend, David. Always.”
Dave gasped and his eyes grew wide—maybe even a little misty, I couldn’t tell. He knew as well as I did that those were the time traveler’s final words to Filby before climbing back on his time machine and heading into the future, never to return.
“I never thought . . . I will see you later. Thanks, man.” He grinned.
Dave reached out and we shook hands. I don’t know why, but we had never shaken hands before. His grip was firm and warm and full of life. And friendship.
And then he turned and flew down The Hill as if I had set him free.
My shoulders sagged as if finally speaking those parting words affected me almost as much as they did Dave, as if I had brought the last few years to their ultimate conclusion. And suddenly—perhaps not unexpectedly—The Movie didn’t seem indispensable anymore, as if it had served its purpose, outlived its usefulness.
In a way, I guess I had set myself free as well.
Alone now, I climbed to the top of The Hill and looked around. I had never stood at the peak before, but now seemed the right time. Other than a few birds chirping, there was hardly any sound. The sun was starting to get low, casting a long shadow of The Big Brown Box across the nearly empty parking lot. Once I left this place, I knew it would be impossible to return with any real sense of belonging. With diploma in hand, I already felt disconnected, the four fast years I had spent here just a blur now, no more than memories of brief moments in time.
We were all time travelers, of course, even if our travel was only one steady speed forward into the unknown. I knew then it really was the journey that mattered, not so much our destinations, as the old saying goes, and what we said and did to each other along the way. I thought about all the others who had just graduated, now streaming in all directions, most to never return here again. And I thought about those whose journeys were done forever, or drastically altered—Dave’s friend Paul, Maggie Sutherland, Crystal, Sam.
And my mom, who would have been so proud of me today. Even if she did live only in our memories of her, that was comfort now enough. Comfort now enough.
My dad’s car pulled around the drive. He beeped the horn to signal their arrival as Kenny waved at me from his usual place in the back seat.
I descended The Hill without looking back, faster and faster, forward through time to whatever the future held for me, to whatever new journeys lay ahead, leaving that old George far behind to forge a new beginning.
THE END