Longfellow Middle School, McLean, VA, 1994
Come on Viranda…Steady…You’ve only got five words to write…One of them’s your name…The other ones don’t have that many letters…You can do this…One down…There’s two…halfway there, there’s three…and fou-DAMMIT!
Eh, whatever, nobody’s ever gonna look at this again anyways.
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The Madeira School, McLean, VA, 2001
It’s your basic, “girls become friends, girl takes other girl’s brother to prom, other girl flips out and writes lengthy, hostile yearbook entry to the other girl” story —with an interesting twist! The signer, I’m told her name is Elizabeth, spends most of her time talking about how she has nothing to say to the friend who betrayed her, and how she is only writing to fill up space. So she scrawls a mixture of sarcastic and space-filling remarks: “you are bitching at me to write you a fucking novel”, “what to say, what to say…” “Yes I am laughing at you” and “I have finally almost made it to the end” before she gets to the end of the page and…doesn’t have enough room to finish her bitter rant! A little tiny arrow directs you to the flipside, where presumably, she finished in shame, not once reflecting on the sweet sweet irony.
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Longfellow Middle School, McLean, VA, 1995
I just imagine an adult looking at this yearbook at two different stages. After Sarah signed, they might thing “Wow, I had 8th graders all wrong! Despite their posturing and negative attitude towards education, other kids, and life in general, they can still be kind of sweet.” And if they went back and read it again half an hour later, after “Die Bitch” guy had gotten a hold of it, they’d just think “Nah…I was right.”
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Longfellow Middle School, McLean, VA, 1994
The guy who signed this, B______ (I have no idea)…Man, he must have really needed those blunts! It was so important that him fucking you up is now the sad reality of the situation…unless you agree to his one demand. And that is that you bring him blunts when you come back to school…after summer break…three months later.
Because he really needs them.
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Palatine High School, Palatine IL, 2002
Hm…Not that awkward, you might be thinking. Slightly ignorant, yes. Double ‘lol’ usage, sure. But really not that bad. So why does this stand out? Because it was written in Joe’s yearbook (of “I hate you and you smell” fame.) And poor Joe has no idea who the hell Kevin is.
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Palatine High School, Palatine IL, 2002
The fact Dmitri still had fun sitting next to Joe second semester despite two major strikes against him:
1)hating him
2)the fact that Joe smells
speaks wonders of the teacher of whatever class they sat together in. “Palatine High School: Making learning fun, even if you hate the kid next to you and he smells”
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Thomas Downey High School, Modesto, CA 1998
Another helpful rule of thumb: If your yearbook signature mentions all the “bitches” that you “wanna fuck” the next year, the odds of you actually having sex with a girl are greatly stacked against you. If your signature also includes the phrases “Thug Life” and a misspelled “RIP 2-Pac”, you may as well include “The Virgin” in between your first and last name.
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Longfellow Middle School, McLean, VA, 1995
The hostility in this signature is so over the top that I think it actually doubles back around and becomes a zen koan. Re-Ree refers to my band, which on the same day the yearbook came out had played at the school talent show.
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Thomas Jefferson High School, Alexandria, VA, 1997
Something must have been on Peter’s mind, but I can’t figure out what it was…His sign off of “Live Long and Get Some” ranks right up there on the list of “Things that somebody who has never gotten some” would say
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Thomas Downey High School, Modesto, CA 1998
This seems like a threat that may have been more effective if it had been written in Ramsey’s yearbook.
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Every year, thousands of things get written in people's yearbooks. Some of them are heartfelt and will stand the test of time. Most of them are not. We collect the best examples of the latter group here.
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