My new grad is 22, has a freshly minted diploma from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was turned loose Sunday after exhortations to remember that, from now on, he is “Forever a Badger.”
The idea of Eternal Badgerhood hit his old man hard. I am a fan of tuition reciprocity, and sending a Minnesota kid to Cheddar Land is the best college bargain in the country. But I would have had second thoughts if I had foreseen the psychic stranglehold Bucky would get on my boy, or if I had anticipated how alien I would feel when one of the grads crossing the stage in the Kohl Center (just one of a weekend’s worth of commencements in Badgerville) pretended that his name was Brett Favre.