Rant #3,320: Be True To Your School

I have no idea where my high school.yerbook is.

As I have mentioned before here, those four years I spent in high school--newly moved to Long Island, away from my friends, and pretty much not fitting in for my four years of education there--are a forgettable part of my life.

Those unhappy days greatly affected me, and honestly, I have blotted out just about everything having to do with high school.

I remember things in general, but I don't remember much in specifics.

And again, my high school yearbook has been missing in action for years, and I when we moved, it didn't turn up, either.

My junior high school yearbook is an absolute gem, absolutely defining the neighborhood I grew up in, both the good and the bad as well as the very good and the very bad.

This also was lost somewhere down the line, and I was lucky to get a high-grade exact copy of the yearbook from a fellow classmate.

I cherish this yearbook so much that several years ago, I put it up, page by page, on Facebook.

I was able to find my college yearbook, and my undergraduate school did not make it a requirement that graduates get their photo taken for the book, so a lot of the people I hung out with in college--much happier years than my high school years--aren't even in the book, nor are some non-seniors I was friendly with in college.

Graduate school--maybe there was a yearbook, but I never wanted one, nor did I go to graduation; I just waited to get my diploma in the mail, and that was enough for me.

But back to the high school yearbook ...

i just happened to go on the classmates.com site--an address i had not visited in probably more than a decade--and you guessed it, i actually found the yearbook!

I scrolled through it, and my feelings haven't changed.

Those years were bad for me personally, and at least to me, this yearbook doesnt mean much, and to my eye, all these years later, the book is pretty sour.

i remember some of my fellow grads via their graduation photos, and I do remember one imbecile who pushed me so much to the brink during those years that I actually had a fight with him in the middle of the hallway.

(We had to share lockers back then, and he was throwing my stuff all over the place ... I had had trouble with this brat throughout high school, and the full story about this episode is much longer, and I won't go into it now.

Let's just say that i proved my point.)

As for my photo, it really exemplfies how much i hated going to high school.

My hair--yes, i actually had hair--is a mess, due to my remembrance thst they took the pictures during a very windy and very warm summer day.

i walked to school to get the picture taken--it was just a few weeks before i got my driver's license--and when i got to where the photos were being taken, i didnt have a comb to make my hair presentable, so the photo shows my hair all over the place.

Most importantly, my smile is kind of forced. I just wanted to get the whole thing--both the photo and high school.itself--over and done with, and it shows.

(i also remember that all the boys were told that we had to wear a suit jacket for the photo, but on this blistering hot and windy summer day, myself and just about every boy did not wear long pants that day, we wore shorts and sneakers.)

Did looking through the yesrbook--even electronically--spur any good memories of high school? 

Did I get a kick about seeing myself nearly 50 years ago in a picture from the 1970s?

No, not really. 

Upon seeing some of the teachers, I wondered how many were still with us all these years later ... and I also saw a photo of a teacher thst spurred a memory that I would have liked to forget--that being that just about everyone knew he was having an affair with a student when he was in her 30s and she was probably l5 or 16 yesrs old, and yes, they did get married when she was of legal age, if I remember correctly.

What would happen today if such a situation existed?

No, I don't have many memories of high school, certainly not too many good memories at all ...

And I am just so happy that I once again could close the book on this period of my life--

This time, with a simple click!