Why One Student's Cardboard Companion Left Everyone Speechless at Graduation

“Mom, please promise you won’t stop me.”

My 18-year-old daughter, Maya, stood in front of her bedroom mirror, carefully adjusting a graduation cap on a life-size cardboard cutout of a teenage boy.

The cutout wore a blue graduation gown identical to hers. Its smiling face was so familiar that looking at it made my chest ache.