Friday, April 29, 2016

A to Z April Challenge: Y is for Yearbooks

Genealogists and family historians get a lot of satisfaction from chasing their ancestors’ stories. Finding a diary, a message on a postcard, or a photo with a name attached is like the sun coming out after a storm. One day we will be somebody’s ancestor. We need to leave our descendants a little bit of sunshine too. So here is my story told alphabetically, not chronologically: Growing Up in Cradock.


is for yearbooks.

Yearbooks are where our friends just wrote stupid stuff. I don't have room for ALL the stupid stuff, and besides, who wants to read it? Here are just a few of the kinds of end of year messages we all wrote to each other sending us off for the summer with fond memories of our friends.


(Click on images to enlarge them if you really want to read it!)


























The verdict is in: I am definitely cute and sweet.

Yippee!  There will be no yawning over the yarns yielded by yuppies, youngsters, yokels, and yodelers over yonder at the A to Z April Challenge.

© 2016, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved

13 comments:

  1. I think that it is great that you still have your yearbooks! Ours were stolen years ago. People did write some pretty funny things in them. I remember one of the maddest moments in my life involved my yearbook. One of the schoolmates had died earlier, during the summer, I think, in a car accident. A page in our yearbook was dedicated to him. I didn't want anyone to write on that page. Somebody did, even after me telling them not to. I was very angry at that disrespectful gesture.

    Overall, yearbook signing was a fun time. :)

    Have a blessed day!

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    1. One year 2 of my classmates were killed when their car was hit by a train. They had skipped school that day. Just horrible. I can hear our principal on the loud speaker giving us the news. No one wrote on their memorial page, thank-goodness.

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  2. I love Yearbooks - and have all of mine and hubby's. Whenever I go to the library, he loves to come along and look at all the yearbooks. It's funny how so many go missing from the library and how people sneak in and cut their pictures out.... Hey one more to go. Good Luck.

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    1. Oh sneaky people. I wonder if they cut their picture because they need one or because they want to be forgotten.

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  3. I only have a yearbook for the year I graduated and I was such a hermit, I didn't ask anybody to write in it.

    Finding Eliza

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    1. What some people wrote is so goofy that I don't think you're missing out on much. I read some of the old signings and thought, "Who was that?"

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  4. I remember how much fun it was to write in the yearbooks and then to read what every wrote. Senior year they even had a pizza party for all seniors who wanted to attend to have an opportunity to be able to get everyone you wanted to sign it to sign it :)

    betty

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    1. Pizza party - what a great idea. I wish my school had done that.

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  5. Definitely cute and sweet...and 'Groovy'...what about those beads?
    Sue at CollectInTexas Gal

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    1. I have no clue. I remember Bev, but I don't remember her beads.

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  6. I bet you were sweet, from all you've told us about your life.
    I will have to go back to my yearbooks and see what my friends wrote, it's been years since I've looked - I've been going straight to the photos, especially when an old classmate gets in touch on FB I have to go back to see what they looked like.

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    1. That sounds like me -- when I see a name on FB, I have to check to be sure I even knew them. But yes, I'm definitely sweet and don't you forget it!

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  7. I have all of my yearbooks, my husband's (we graduated from the same high school), all of my parents' yearbooks (they graduated from the same high school), all of their college yearbooks (again, same college), and even yearbooks from my grandparents and their siblings. I should open a yearbook store!

    I noticed that none of the grandparents' have writing in them - perhaps they didn't do that in those days. But it's fun to read my parents' and what they wrote to each other. Young love.

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