Almost done

Today was the Yearbook Dance at school. It meant that the kids were out of class at 1:30 and then basically had 2 hours to run around in the gym and Commons area to get their yearbooks signed. It was a tad bit crazy.

I don't miss my middle school years. I was an awkward, nervous, self-conscious girl who hadn't found herself and let her friends treat her like a doormat. And the end of the school year meant yearbooks, and it meant the nerve-racking event of trying to approach boys that I liked and try to get them to sign my yearbook. I wasn't at all aggressive or even assertive, so it was a very anxiety-driven process. I would make my friends ask them, or I'd make many failed attempts at walking up to them on my own. Oh, those are days that I am glad have passed.

So, now as a middle school teacher, I get to sit back and observe the hormonal and confused teens as they suffer through the antics of yearbook time. For some, it's a badge of popularity--they get as many people as they can to sign their yearbook. For others, they make a point to save a full page for each of their friends and then MAYBE ask other underlings to sign in some miniscule spot. And then there's those that have 2 or 3 people sign it and then put it away. I suppose that's more meaningful and you have a higher probablity that you'll remember those 2 or 3 people after middle school. I flipped through my 8th grade yearbook the other day (And by the way, there was a current events page, and the favorite singer was MC Hammer and the Gulf War was currently making history!! Yikes, I feel old!!), and it just made me shake my head and laugh. I don't recall 99% of the signatures in that book (except one whom I am still friends with!!), and I don't really care. It's just funny how people sign your yearbook with, "Let's hang out over the summer!" or "Keep it touch!" or "Call me at..." and none of it matters even a year later. Just a weird thing that doesn't seem to change after generations.

It just made me more glad that I was the teacher today and not the student. It's far more fun to be the observer than the participant.

And it was a dance too, so that's always fun to watch. A couple of girls got in a fight (over who knows what), and apparently a group of Mexican boys wanted to beat each other up as the dance was ending, so that's interesting. I tell ya, the natives are restless and they are ready to be out of the confines of the school. And so am I.