Partway through the commencement procession of graduates, I handed my niece a sticker bracelet to paste onto a paper girl. Then I checked the video screen to see the stacks diplomas really hadn’t shrunk by much.

It was then I realized that sometimes it’s best to have an excuse to act like a kid — or at least sit in the kids section.

Last weekend, my brother-in-law and I watched my younger sister’s graduation from the cheap seats, while his wife and my parents took the three lone tickets to watch in person. We watched from a smaller auditorium across campus where overflow, ticketless and what often looked like second-tiered relatives watched on video.

Our mission was to entertain my three nieces, age one to six, throughout commencement. After we watched a never-ending stream of graduates pour into the main hall, I knew we were in for a long haul.

Don’t get me wrong, while I was proud of my sister’s achievement and the achievements of all the other high school and college grads around, commencements grow long and fairly repetitive after you’ve been to a few.

I found myself more worried about whether I could entertain myself than the kids. So how do you survive a two-plus hour graduation ceremony with a couple hundred graduates to get through and three kids?

Stickers, of course. And tablets, books, coloring books and whatever else my sister packed into her girls’ giant goodie bag.

Minutes in — and a surprisingly good guest speaker — I found myself and the adults around me growing antsy. The group beside us kept going in and out, taking calls, and moving balloons from chair to chair. So I did what any rational adult would do: I colored, helped my niece play a tablet game where she moves the Hungry, Hungry Caterpillar, and helped another read a book.

Later, we moved out to a side part of the theater where the girls could spread out as the graduates were called for their diplomas. Then it was time for stickers and to count the number of Ashleys — my graduating sister’s name — called out. One niece counted a dozen — and three with her middle name, Marie.

“Another Ashley!” my 4-year-old niece said loudly around Ashley No. 5.

It was around that time that I realized coloring and entertaining children was really the better end of the bargain and much better than sitting all adult-like in a crowded auditorium. Apparently, the man sitting next to my parents would have agreed; he slept for a good part of commencement.

But I suppose it comes with a mild cost. Later, I realized my 4-year-old niece had been open-mouthed cough with a cold most of the day (She’s 4, so she has an excuse to not cover her cough).

Later at a restaurant, I complimented her for breezing a crayon through a maze on a kids menu.

“Thanks. It was easy peasy,” she said, pausing intently, “because I’m a ninja.”

She coughed another open-mouth, share-it-with-the-world cough.

I knew I was doomed; it felt like my payment for getting out of watching the entire ceremony. I thought, “You may be cute, kid, but you’re not a ninja with that cough.”

I sat through a two-plus hour graduation, and all I have to show for it is the scratchy-throated start of a cold — and a few memories, of course.