My 14-year-old Sierra graduated from eighth grade today. She’s awesome.

The ceremony included the recitation of all 600 graduates’ names, with each kid collecting a diploma. It was actually pretty efficiently done, with two readers handling names and two columns of students walking at a time. It took maybe 10 minutes total.

Before they started calling the names, the principal gave a request: Please hold all applause until the end. That request makes complete and total sense; applause after each name would make things take for-friggin’-ever. And if some kids get big applause and some don’t, that sucks, too. So hold your applause. No biggie.

They start calling the names, and we’re only a few in when a parent yells “Woooo!” after their kid’s name is called. That, of course, unleashed a dam. About 30% of the time when a kids’s name was called, you’d hear some cheer. Sometimes it was a simple “Woo!”

Sometimes, it was a much longer, louder, “WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!”

And occasionally, you’d get things like “Yeahhhhhhhhhhh!!!! WAY TO GO TIMMY!!!! YOU ARE THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME!”

Here’s the problem: These longer, louder cheers would overlap the next name. Or the next two or three names. That sucks.

I didn’t object to a simple, understated, celebratory “Woo.” But I did take offense to the carousers whooping it up like crazy. As did a curmudgeonly grandfather sitting behind me, who kept complaining about it. “They’re covering up other kids’ names. It’s not right!”

Look, I love celebrating folks, praising and cheering good work, and sharing your joy and enthusiasm for successes — especially family successes! But it’s important to lift people up without simultaneously pushing others down. A chiller “Woo” doesn’t mean you love your kid less; it means you also have respect and admiration for everyone else.

Woo!