Milton's Last Graduate Called Gets a Sock of Quarters

Every name called before yours is a classmate's triumph and, financially, also yours.

The tradition, according to the school's admission catalogue, began in 1986. The dean of students at the time, John Mackenzie, decided that the last graduate deserved a reward for waiting: an athletic sock containing a dime from each senior. At some point the dimes became quarters. The sock never became anything else.

It could easily have become a cup. A cup would have been engraved, polished, and put in a case. Instead Milton has kept, for forty years, a sock, which is the correct container for a reward whose only qualification is patience.

Think about the senior's afternoon. Four years of trying to get ahead. Four years of being first: first draft in, first hand up, first to apply early. And then, on the last day, a ceremony where every name that isn't yours is good news. Getting ahead would ruin it. You sit, smile, applaud your friends, and quietly improve your position with each one.

I have done this at the DMV. Nobody gave me a sock.

There is no way to train for it. There is no essay in which you can explain your long-standing commitment to coming last. The diplomas are random. You simply wait, and at some point a name is read, and it is either yours or the room's.

The youngest asked me what I would do if I came last at something and won. I said I had come last at many things and won nothing. She considered this and said, "You didn't have the sock." Then she went to get one of mine, the left one of a pair whose right one has been missing since spring, and put a quarter in it, and handed it to me for, she said, being last to finish dinner.