June 26th, 2017

I ran across these recently.  Two of my highschool yearbooks.  We were the Richland Rebels.  Texas y'see.   Back in 1969, when I was a Sophmore, no eyebrows were raised over a highschool having a confederate flag as a symbol of their school, at least no eyebrows that they paid attention to back then.  It was a different time,  ya'll.

The last time I looked at my yearbooks was probably a week or so after I got each of them.  There are no signatures in either of these yearbooks which surprised me.  I thought I remembered getting at least a few. Perhaps the signatures are in the one I haven't yet found, the missing year, 1970.

Naturally, I sat down and looked through it.  A highschool yearbook is like a time capsule. Girl's hair - ratted up, hair sprayed into submission and teased into "flips", the clothes - knee length skirts and dresses for the most part. I think my senior year girls were finally allowed to wear pants but it had to be part of a "pant suit"  good heavens, do you remember those?   The boys all looked so clean cut and spiffy, at least on the outside.  No jeans to be seen in my school. For the guys it was button-up dress shirts and slacks and short hair.  The football boys wore ties on Fridays, if I recall correctly.  I do remember the giant elaborate corsages the A-list girls wearing on game days.

Naturally I looked myself up.  Gadzooks! 

No glasses. Hmm that must have been the year that I did a lot of squinting.  I've been wearing glasses since I was 3 years old.  But I do vaguely recall one year of trying to not.  Disastrous.  You will note...no "flip" hairstyle.  I've never been stylish except perhaps by accident.

So I looked at each page.  I was never a "joiner so I am in very few groups photos.  I looked up a few old friends and that was a fun memory jog.  But mostly, while I recognized a few names, there weren't many and even fewer of the photos looked familiar.  And so I asked myself why I was hanging on to these enormously heavy books?  I graduated highschool 46 years ago.  And while I recall fondly a few really good friends and the good times we shared, my highschool days were not the pinacle of my life. I have moved on in a big sort of way.  I decided that I don't need the yearbooks anymore.  Out they went without a glimmer of remorse~!

I am still in touch with the good friends that I made way back then. I don't need the yearbook to help me bring them to mind. And if I ever find the missing yearbook which is the one I think has all the signatures, I will read every page first and then decide what to do with it.  Probably, it will join it's bretheren in the landfill.

I am loving this pared down life that we are creating.  Not so much "stuff" weighing us down.  That said, it is the history of me.  It's part of who I am and what created me.   I will continue sorting through boxes and see what other surprises I find.  It's worth a moment to remember and sometimes a laugh if nothing else.