Yearbook Day
Confession: Every time I move, I think about tossing my high school yearbooks.
They’re heavy, y’all.
The only time I bother to flip through them is as I pack or unpack them from the box where I’ve stacked all of them, along with nine other elementary and middle school yearbooks - thus adding to my “are these too heavy to keep moving?” conundrum.
Back when the yearbooks were new, I remember sitting anxiously in my chair when they were delivered to our classrooms, wishing my last name was closer to the front of the alphabet so I could be the first to flip through it.
I’d search for my own picture first, then flip through the entire thing with my fingers crossed that I’d found my way into other pictures.
If you are a student, heed my words of wisdom: Befriend the yearbook staff.
Despite my best efforts, I was featured only twice outside of the mandatory posed school photo. Once, when I submitted my own photo for the 8th grade “Baby Picture” spread. And once when I wore a potato costume for an extracurricular activity.
Thank GOD they didn’t attach my name to this little ‘tato.
Once the excitement of yearbook day itself had worn down, there was the thrill of participating in “yearbook signing.”
Every girl would carefully select four of five different colored gel pens and carry their yearbook with them everywhere they went for the final two weeks of class.
Every boy either had a dying Sharpie or would borrow one of your gel pens and never bring it back.
Being too scared to simply request someone sign my yearbook, I had to be ready to pounce when someone else suggested that their yearbook be signed.
The rules of reciprocation very clearly state that if I rip your yearbook out of your hands and quickly scrawl “HAGS” on the inside cover, you have to do the same for me.
In elementary school, if, at the end of the “yearbook signing season,” I didn’t feel satisfied with the number of signatures I’d gotten, I’d sign it myself. Popular kids, nerds I’d never met, cute boys - even a few teachers - would “sign” just their names in the back of my yearbook in handwriting that all looked remarkably similar to my own.
I also took care to gently Sharpie out the faces of the people I didn’t like and to circle the names and faces of people I was friends with. (Yikes.)
My middle school years are probably best summed up in this message from my eighth grade yearbook - “Were you in my class? - Jackie”