Sarah, just finishing up her sophomore year in high school, brought home her yearbook yesterday. I flipped through it for perhaps a quarter hour, marveling at how the more things change, the more they stay the same. While the hair and the clothes and the number of pages printed in full color have changed quite a bit over the last blanky-six years, the basics are still there.

To confirm my suspicions, I headed out to the garage for a few minutes and extracted my own yearbook, from senior year. My high school always had a great yearbook. After all, how many high schools can say that Ernest Hemingway wrote for their yearbook? I’m guessing just one: ours. Not to mention all our other notable alumni, including (voice of Homer Simpson) Dan Castellaneta and (D-list star) Kathy Griffin.

I flipped open the book and almost right off the bat discovered on page 26 the photo reproduced here. Yes, that’s actually me in the highlighted circle. Apparently I am attempting to outwardly declare my strong belief that the sporting team associated with my particular institution possessed abilities exceeding that of the teams of all other similar institutions. No, I don’t look anything remotely like that anymore.

The novelty of exploring the book’s innards soon wore off and I began reading all the scribbles people left me at the time. Here’s one, for example:

Charlie,
I think I’ll write about all the things we did that made French fun. Qui, que, quoique, jusqu’a ce que, quoique nous, and Point a Pitre. There I think that’s it. Oh! And also the great drawings you drew– of the unicorn and of the one where I’m falling out of the window. Bye bye!
Amy

I have absolutely no idea who that is and I don’t recall any drawings of anyone falling out of any windows. I’m sure such memories could be recalled through the heavy application of hypnosis and/or beer, but some things are better left alone.

Here’s another:

Charlie,
This year has been great, my best ever. You’ve been a great part of it. I loved talking, joking, and singing with you in Architecture. You and Bob really made the class worthwhile. I loved your chicken-clucking rendition of “It was a very good year.” This class has been my favorite, as are the people (especially you) in this class. I hope to see you over the summer (call me: 555-1275) we should go out. Take care. Love, Col.

To answer your question, yes, she actually left a real number. To answer your other question, no, I never called. Am I an idiot, or what?! She probably could’ve hit me with a brick and I wouldn’t have noticed. Sheesh!

The majority of notes, however, went like these:

Let’s be honest, I probably wouldn’t have gotten through programming with you watching over my shoulder.

Thank you for all the help in computers.

I want to thank you so much for all the help you have given me in comp. programming. I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t explain all the errors to me.

I know this makes me look like an expert, but keep in mind, this is back when computers were still steam-powered and programs were written on papyrus. Programs were transferred between computers via carrier pigeon. All this “help” I doled out boiled down to explaining “x = 1″ is how you assign the value of “1″ to “x”. It’s a bit disheartening that’s all I was remembered for.

But that was then. Keep checking the “Notable Alumni” section on our Wikipedia page. Someday I’ll be there right below Ernest Hemingway and above Ray Kroc. That is, as soon as someone stops deleting the entry I keep adding.