Yearbooks: A Traumatizing Trip Down Memory Lane

Yesterday I was extremely bored, seeing as how there was still a day until the ALCS began consuming my life, so I decided to look through my old yearbooks. About four pages into the 7th grade, it became very clear that I was nowhere near close enough to the level of intoxication it would take to deal with that disaster, so I skipped Jr. High altogether and went straight to the high school years. After the initial wave of nostalgia passed, I realized a few surprising things:

1. I do not remember 80% of the people in my class. Maybe this isn't actually all that surprising considering I can barely remember where I was or what I was doing just last week. I do, in fact, have a terrible memory. However, I was still expecting to see names and faces that brought back memories of some sort. Instead, I was left struggling to remember anything significant from back then. (Maybe this whole I-barely-remember-life-before-I-was-sixteen thing IS becoming a problem)
2. People were VERY comfortable writing extremely inappropriate things to each other. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% positive I also wrote some questionable things to my friends in their yearbooks, especially since I never took the activity of "sign my yearbook!" very seriously. I just wonder why none of us ever thought anyone else would see this stuff. (high schoolers are dumb)
3. It's possible that there is nothing in life more embarrassing than yearbook photos. I mean, they are in that ridiculous little book for the rest of time! (The only solution: Burn It!)

There were other things I noticed of course, a disturbingly high level of school spirit for one, but mostly I was just overwhelmed with a desire to pack these things away for a very, very long time. The fact that I already can't remember people who I don't see and talk to on a daily basis is mildly traumatizing. The fairly inappropriate and borderline offensive thoughts written in my yearbooks, many times by those people who I don't remember, are also pretty traumatizing to reflect on. Most traumatizing of all however, is most definitely the photos. And not just photos of myself. From our hair and clothes to our ridiculous poses, well, no one comes off looking good. Rather than serving as a way to remember the good times we all had, I'll only think of yearbooks as a cruel reminder of just how unfortunate being a teenager actually was. Thank Gaga that's over.

Fist Pump!

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