May 27 - 123 out of 124

Have you ever had that dream where you're back in college and it's the end of the year and you suddenly realize that there's this one class that you haven't been to all semester long, and now it's time for finals, and there's no freaking way you're going to pass?
That actually happened to me in real life. Well, kind of.
It was my senior year and I was taking this one credit badminton class, pass/fail, and the grade was determined by attendance and attendance alone. Suckily for me, this class was every Wednesday morning at 8 o clock. And what can I tell you? I blew it off. What, I'm going to drag my ass out of bed that early for fucking badminton? In the spring semester of my senior year? Hell no.
You had to attend 70% of the classes to get a passing score, and I didn't make it, and the teacher wouldn't cut me any slack. What can I tell you? The woman had standards. The fucking badminton teacher had standards. And because of this, come graduation day I was one credit shy.
They let me walk anyway. And during the ceremony they don't give you the actual diploma anyway, so it wasn't like I had to tell my folks about it that day. My plan was to sign up for something during summer school, do just enough work to pass and get that extra credit, and then graduate and maybe tell my parents about it.
Only I didn't do that, which was stupid because I was totally around. It wasn't even like I was working. I was just hanging out and shit. I just never actually got around to registering for anything. First summer session came and went, and then second summer session came and went. And then all of a sudden it was fall, and I was like, shit, now what.
Meanwhile, my parents kept bugging me to see the diploma, so they could have it framed. And I kept on having to come up with excuses about what had happened to it. It was lost in the mail, getting shuffled around in the registrar's office, sent to my old address, etc. My dad kept threatening to go down to the school and throw his weight around, but somehow he didn't, thank God.
After a while, they both kind of just stopped asking about it, and we moved on.
When it came time to start looking for jobs, I basically lied about it on my resume. I just put the date that I was supposed to graduate on there and that was that. Actually, that's what I've been doing for almost 20 years now, and so far it hasn't been a problem.
I mean, it does get in the way sometimes. I basically can't apply for any job where they ask for college transcripts. And grad school is out of the question, of course. But then again, it you can't be bothered to go to a pass/fail badminton class enough times to graduate, you probably shouldn't be thinking about grad school anyway.
I eventually got a fake diploma and had it framed. It totally looks like the real thing. Old English font and all that. The first time I showed it to my parents, I was shitting bunnies. I mean I was convinced that they were going to notice it was a fake, but they didn't. Of course. I mean, why would they suspect anything?
For the first year or so, I really stressed about it a lot, but that faded pretty fast. Now I almost never think about it, and when I do, it's mostly to question my memories of what happened. Like, did I really not graduate? No, that's ridiculous. There's no way I came that close and then just didn't follow through. I'm sure I took a summer class. I was around that summer, I remember that. I totally took that one business class pass/fail and finished out my diploma. I can picture myself in the classroom in the mornings, and then hanging out with the girls downtown in the afternoons. Seriously, did I really not graduate? Some days, I'm honestly not sure.