Some graduates received jewelry.
Others got money.
A few even drove home in brand-new cars with giant bows on the hood.
Chainsaw Chicken got something else entirely.
Nobody knows exactly how it happened.
One minute he was standing outside the graduation hall holding his diploma like he had personally defeated higher education itself. The next minute he was carrying a blonde woman in a blue dress while several faculty members quietly walked in the opposite direction pretending not to notice.
Observers described the moment as “confusingly triumphant.”
The woman smiled at him like he had finally achieved his purpose in life. Chainsaw Chicken smiled back with the expression of a man who believed student loans were a type of scholarship.
Parents clapped politely.
A small child asked if this happened at all colleges.
Someone’s grandmother fainted near the punch bowl.
Chainsaw Chicken later explained:
“Education opens doors.”
No one was certain what he meant by that.
The university newspaper tried to interview him, but the conversation reportedly drifted into a fifteen-minute explanation about “advanced relationship sciences” and the importance of “continuing hands-on research after graduation.”
The article was never published.
Years later, many students forgot where they parked.
Some forgot their professors’ names.
Most forgot half of what they learned.
But everyone remembered the year Chainsaw Chicken received a graduation gift he would never forget.