Make Me a Yearbook

One of the high school nostalgia websites has been putting out various complete yearbooks for sale, apparently the same versions that were originally published during the high school years (or in the case of my own senior yearbook, the year AFTER I had graduated, the turkeys). I can see some alumni jumping on this opportunity and picking up some yearbooks from their "favorite" years. I happen to own the 1972 and 1974 yearbooks from my sophomore and senior years, respectively. My sister owns the 1970 yearbook (her senior year and my eighth grade). Sorry, nostalgia website, I probably don't need 1971 or 1973. But how about...

How about 1994? Or 2005? Or 1983? Why not one of these years? Have a yearbook specially designed for someone who gives the necessary information about all of the events and circumstances going on in his or her life at the time. I worked in a Chinese restaurant in Gainesville in '83 and lived in a certain apartment complex nearby. Here are the businesses I frequented then. Who worked there? Did I go to a church? If so, who were the members and what happened there? What were the big local news and sports stories of 1983? Put the publicly-available pictures of the people involved in my life in 1983 according to their context, much in the same way that class directories are presented in yearbooks. Put it all in one very personalized book and you can kiss good-bye the idiotic notion that somehow your high school years were oh-so much more significant than anything that happened since.

For much of the time I was in high school, I was prevented in different ways from enjoying my experiences there to their fullest. It was not a happy time at all for me, and I harbor no paulsimonesque "Kodachrome" delusional false memories of my life then. Just opening up one of my yearbooks has been something I have come to avoid doing, since it just brings back more vivid, brutal memories of my generally miserable time back then. My years since then, especially since 1979, have all been much happier and more fulfilling by contrast. Pick a year since 1979, ANY YEAR, and make me a yearbook for it!

Or...hey, self, here's an idea...it's never too late: make up your own as you live through each year!