What's Up With That?

by Tom Kuzeja - March 17, 1999

What's Up With That?

Sign My Yearbook?

I get a kick out of checking out high school yearbooks, not so much vintage ones that I can't relate to, but the ones from my era, the 80's. That's not such a long time ago but to me it seems like ages. I can look at anyone's yearbook from that timeframe and be instantly transported back to the land of the Farrah Fawcett flip hairdo. Apparently 94.5% of the girls had to have one.

Whenever I have spare time, I like to stop by the local public library of the town I happen to be visiting in. You can request to see the yearbooks of the local high school. I've done this a bunch of times and even though I don't know the faces, the patterns are there. For example, every yearbook is centered around the cool clique. In fact, the year book should really be titled "The Cool Clique" and subtitled in small legal print "...and some of the other kids who happened to be around while we, the Cool Clique, were taking photos." Typically there are 400 sets of photos of the popular girls doing interesting things like writing at the blackboard, sitting at a desk, peeking through a door, you know, stuff like that. Then there are the Cool Clique guys hanging out, sometimes with Cool Clique Chicks, sometime being cool and solo. Every now and then, you can see examples of the nutty humor that the Cool Clique possessed comes through in a zany way. Most like this will be some Cool Clique Chick making a face while the caption below says "Oh Gross, Dog Food For Lunch". Yeah, like the Cool Clique ever ate a hot meal in the school cafeteria.

Nice haircut. I hope you finished the salad before you put the bowl on your head.

And since most yearbook staffs were typically comprised of Cool Clique members, you either had to suck up to the Cool Clique or be made fun of them in order to get your damn photo into the cheesy publication. Oh sure, every now and then they'd take a random non-Clique photo, maybe of two girls dancing and caption it "So and So and What's Her Name Boogie Down" and use that on a page, but of course this was only done to keep Federal Prosecutors (who are typically non-Clique graduates from years past) from investigating the entire Cool Clique staff of yearbook workers.

I appear in my yearbook a handful of times, usually in some nerdy pose. As for candid photos, I had to ask a Cool Cliquer to take my one and only candid photo.

Nevertheless, I will continue my quirky habit of checking out random yearbooks from random towns. It's a riot, and it has me looking forward to the return of the Farrah flip.

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