So it was with some excitement that memories of the last few days of school came back to me recently, particularly the time-honored tradition of signing yearbooks, those journals that showcase photographs of various teams and clubs, and a flourish of loopy autographs. For some reason the photographs in my yearbooks were always blurry, as if the photographer had never taken a picture in his life and had only just been handed a camera and designated class photographer.
When I was given my year book at the end of the school year and looked through it, I was astonished to find clubs and activities I never knew existed, like the Assistant’s Club, a club which consisted of all the extras who helped all the other clubs and teams get ready – like the water boys who picked up filthy towels in the locker room and Glee kids who made posters for the Chess Team and stuck them on lockers.
Flipping in a few pages to the club I was in, the Dennis the Menace Fan Club, I saw a kid in the picture who never came to one comic book meeting, who only showed up for the yearbook picture! Hey! C’mon! Cheater! Louse! All you guys, you knuckleheads who ran down the hall when they announced a team picture, I cry NO FAIR! You guys should have gotten together and had your picture taken as the Slacker’s Club!
Oddly enough, my memory of all thingsyearbook, came a few days ago in the form of an extremely long, bright pink Cadillac sedan, circa 1979, that puttered down our street. I normally lump all vehicles in the same general category, that is, transportation, and honestly, I may not have noticed this garishly pink car at all, except that it took about five minutes to pass me. In fact, I think it was about twenty-seven feet long, an old model sedan that could comfortably seat an entire circus family and their pet elephant.
“Wow, I’d love to drive that thing around for just one day,” I thought to myself, but no sooner had that thought crossed my mind that I noticed something else unusual about the car. Across its pink chassis, in all sizes and styles of writing, the car had been plastered with autographs and messages. From bumper to bumper, everywhere including even the tires, people had gloriously “Sharpied” their names with flamboyant well wishes and have-a-good-summers. This was no ordinary pink car at all. I was witnessing a living breathing version of a kind of elementary school mobile yearbook, and incidentally, many of the signatures were in cursive, that antiquated style of writing that wrote itself out of existence in 1995.
Wow, I thought, wow. Instead of kids getting books to sign at the end of the school year, now they get a car! A pink car, mind you, with enough room to have a picnic and family reunion and a funeral at the end. Think of it, I thought. And I was thinking of it. I was thinking of my thought about thinking of it and my thought was this: Years from now when this generation of kids wanted to look up the friends they had had and the activities they were involved in, instead of dragging out the ‘ol yearbook and taking a trip down memory lane, they could literally hop in their own personal vehicle and be driving on memory lane.
How convenient, I thought, for kids! The whole idea of it was avant garde and retro all shoved behind the wheel of the great American automobile. Who wouldn’t want to get behind the wheel of your memory car, now a mobile unit chalk full of reminiscing, and read what your classmates thought about you, all the while moving towards a future destination that happened a couple of decades ago? And to add to the perks of this once in a lifetime cruise, kids could still be able to text and drive and lean out their car window while reading the autographs and messages off their door jam – maybe on a clear day with the top down, even a signature on their front bumper. Wow! What a rush!
I could see it all in my head as the funeral, I mean car, slowly passed me by…parents and grandparents all gathered at their kid’s school, cheering as their children signed each other’s cars and then with a blast of exhaust fumes, took off into the past!
“Don’t forget!” a helicopter mom would be yelling as her daughter sped off, “Any signatures you see in the side mirror might be bigger than they appear! BE CAREFUL! Have fun! Don’t forget to text us while you’re driving!”
I was giving some serious thought myself of buying a car and having Staples photocopy my yearbook from high school all over it and start driving it around town without a license or any insurance. I could even round up some old buddies from grade school, maybe even throw in a few bullies who stuck gum in my hair. Yea, to heck with grade school grudges and the time the entire seventh grade saw me spill my lunch tray, let’s go all out for the mobile yearbook, Ya-hoo! I could the car being organized into clubs and activities with the see science club signing the mechanical areas, the Forensics Team signing the info-mation center, and so on right down to the kids in the Slacker’s Club, who, because they never did anything could sign underneath the car, maybe while it was moving.
I began thinking back, wondering what might be different if some of my eighth-grade friends or teachers had signed my pink car rather than the hard copy yearbook I store in garage or attic or basement somewhere. How would those messages be different and most importantly, would the car have greater resale value if one of the signers later became famous? Lots and lots and lots of questions here – maybe requiring me to get a lot bigger, longer car down the road.
For example, my math teacher, Mrs. Nixon, was a distant cousin to the then current president, Richard Nixon, who sent his best wishes to our class at the end of my sixth-grade year. I could see her signature, and maybe even his, taking a prominent position on my driver’s side door. Now after Watergate, I don’t know, I would have to consider buffing it out, but still…
Then there was Kim, a coquettish blonde in seventh grade who claimed I was the first boy to kiss her. She wrote in my yearbook that my breath was bad, but also wrote that we could try kissing again the next year. I don’t remember having that breath that was that bad or breathing that hard when I got ready to kiss her, but still, she was reasonably cute and I can tell you that if she had written it on the hood of my pink car, I’d probably go a bit easy on the jet spray when I washed it, just for old-time sake.
Finally, I thought of all those messages squeezed in the corners and on the back pages of my past yearbooks and frankly, most of them from kids I’d never heard of or seen the entire school year. Why were they suddenly taking up space in my yearbook? Like, there was a ton of messages that expressed in one form or another that I was a good person, as if they had been watching me all along in the background. Who were these people? I have no idea. I always like this curious one – “I hope I can be in your homeroom next year.” It was signed by Bernadette, who by the way, was in my homeroom for a whole year and sat right behind me.
Most of the messages all had a kind of generic quality to them, and probably wouldn’t change or have more flavor even if they had been written on a pink sedan back in the day. While there would be those expressing the typical expressions of good will and well wishes for a brilliant summer, they all would still be reminders of how quickly time rolls by and that, ultimately, we make our sharpie mark on the world with something more than a passing signature.
Yet, in a last flash of pink dazzle, I did manage to catch a glimpse of the license plate as the bright pink Cadillac-turned-yearbook lumbered by me. It was a message full of hope and promise, and summed up what we all wanted to hear when another school year comes to an end, and we are looking down the road towards our future.
It simply read: YOU’LL GO FAR, and it was printed in all caps.