Awkward Yearbook Signatures

Granite Hills High School, El Cajon, CA, 1999

The transition from sentence one to sentence two of this signature is one of the greatest of all time.  Like a good speech at a roast, it starts with a pleasant formality and then instantly moves on to an incredibly embarrassing anecdote. The later claims of the book owner’s “smartness” are no doubt used ironically, although we should perhaps consider how low of a bar being smarter than Matt, the bottle-stabbing-attempt witness, is.

Efforts to find Cristina’s signature in the yearbook were unsuccessful.

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.”

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”

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.