Truly A Night Of Golden Memories. By Jeff Smith MONEY HAS A way of insulating its owners from the uncomfortable inconveniences of life, and eventually it renders one immune even to the hints of resentment, jealousy and outraged social justice from that other sort of person, outside your circle of friends and relations. Mindful of this, I can understand how the moms and dads of the Catalina Foothills School District's Family/Faculty Association (FFA) are reacting with stunned disbelief and offended virtue to criticism of their plans for their high school's graduation night. To hear members of the steering committee tell it, all they're trying to do is keep their kids from getting murdered by marauding mobs of drunk drivers on graduation night. How could anyone argue against that? (Well, I could go into a fairly esoteric rant on Darwinism and the threat of unchecked population growth, but it would probably just piss a lot of parents off. Never mind.) Let's say, just to move the discussion along, that the idea of a safe, sober graduation night is a sound one. So how best do we set to the task? Arrest the little bastards and lock them up until tomorrow morning. Of course they'll only go out the night after grad night, get boiled, and kill one another off in roughly the same percentages as if you'd never bothered. I regard certain behaviors and outcomes as an inevitable consequence of being born and surviving to adolescence; among these are drunkenness, drunk driving, drunk-driving accidents, drunk-driving accident fatalities. I do not say I endorse all of these things, any more than I endorse pre-teen pregnancy, but I will say that preaching abstinence as the only prophylactic, in either case, is dwelling in a fool's paradise. So I cannot warm very cozily to the plan to herd all the high school grads from Catalina Foothills into the school gym after the graduation ceremony, and keep them all so dizzyingly diverted--and straight and sober--that Walpurgisnacht will pass harmlessly and they'll all grow up to become good little stockbrokers and Junior Leaguers. Especially not at $125 a head. You read that right: a buck and a quarter, to attend an official function on school property. At least quasi-official. The Catalina Foothills grad night, a theme party called Enchanted Knight, is the brain-child of a committee of the FFA, which is not, as I first surmised, the Future Farmers of America: it's their version of the PTA. Specifically, the idea came from Judi Sherwood, who graduated from San Marino High School in California. That piqued my curiosity, because I dated a girl from San Marino. In fact my first wife was this girl's pal and school-mate, and when their private girls' school had its grad night, they rented Disneyland. No shit. San Marino is one of the stinking-richest towns in America, and that's the way things are done there. So that's the way parents like Judi Sherwood and fellow steering committee member Peter Bramley want to do things for their kids, now that they're getting to relive their glory days through the fruit of their loins. Lacking a major theme park to rent, the committee, which got school board approval on a first-time, try-it-and-see basis, plans a soiree worthy of royalty: dinner, dancing, an all-night disc jockey, casino gambling, games, prizes, specially constructed sets to turn the school in a medieval fantasyland, "hundreds and hundreds" of handmade costumes for the serving wenches and vassals and, according to Bramley, who is the publicity chairman, "many surprises that I'm not willing to disclose at this point." Round-heeled parlor maids, mayhaps? Oh, and breakfast next morning. And all for just $250 a couple. Bramly, who speaks with that characteristic, rising, half-questioning inflection at the end of his sentences, reports that parents--but underclasspersons' parents, not the graduating seniors' own folks--will wait tables, fetch and carry, run the games and generally cater to every whim. Is it to die for, or what? Wouldn't you just love for your daughter or son to have a memorable and safe graduation night like this? Actually, if my kids came to me for money for such a gig, I'd have a chat with their mother about paternity issues. I want my children to go out and do things they'll only confess years from now and under the influence of mind-altering substances. And I want them to do it for cheap. Especially if it involves public school facilities for which I already am paying property taxes. Two-hundred-and-fifty clams a couple for a party in the school gym? Excuse me? I mean, may I be excused from this geek-fest? Edith Shaked, who has three kids in Catalina Foothills schools, wants to be excused too. She is plenty steamed over the cost and tone of this event, and when Edith gets exercised she's a bulldog. On top of the $25,000 to $30,000 anticipated from ticket sales, Edith says, the FFA is passing the hat among the business community. This, from a school whose seniors are planning a post-graduation trip to the Bahamas. I'd suggest they hit up Don Diamond. He wants his latest subdivision to be sneaked into the Catalina Foothills District, instead of Amphi, where geography has put it. And he can certainly afford the 25 grand the FFA wants. Some of that money will be used, according to Bramley and Sherwood, to give "scholarships" to graduates whose families can't afford the $125 individual ticket to the par-tahy. Cool. I'm a nerd with acne and a mom and dad who clerk the 7-Eleven and rent the porte cochere. We can't afford a ticket for grad night, so I go to my school councilor and beg for a "scholarship" ticket. Nobody will ever know, and I will not be stigmatized. Yeah, right. Joe Ballantine, the school board president, put the whole thing into a perspective even a poor guy can understand: "The board has real concerns about this not being...the word I've heard used is inclusive. But this is the first year for this kind of grad night, and some of the parents are used to these things where they come from. After this there'll be an assessment. "It's an expensive evening all right. I'd like to go and see what it's gonna be like."

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