Forever Young

I was in the shower this morning, and all this random shit from my younger years kept popping into my head. Just dumb shit, but it�s crap that just cracks me up.

And then I started thinking about my high school yearbooks, the ones from 1988 and 1989, and how I have to keep them locked up in my room because if the boys found them, oh my god. All of my credibility as a parent and responsible human being would be gone.

I remember looking at my dad�s yearbook when I was a teenager. I loved it because it was the 1966 yearbook, and I was obsessed with the 60�s as a teenager. Movies, tv shows, the culture, everything. I used to know every single thing you could know about Woodstock (the REAL Woodstock, not the bullshit over commercialized shit they tried to pass off as Woodstock in the 90�s, which I�m sure was fun, but not the original and no where near it), I watched the documentary AND read books about it.

Now, Beavis is interested in everything 80�s and it�s just a matter of time before he�s asking to look at my yearbooks.

�Mom, can I look at your yearbooks?�

�No�

�Why?�

�Because a bunch of really mean people stole them and wrote all kinds of nasty stuff in them�.

Okay, so the mean people were my friends. And I handed them the yearbook and asked them to sign it. And I probably wrote worse in theirs.

And the other reason is this:

Sorry, shitty image. It�s not easy to scan from the yearbook, and I�d have to dig up the actual pic. And no, I�m not Franki Larose. (Sorry Franki. I didn�t mean to put your name there on purpose).

That�s what I looked like in August of 1987, when I had my senior pics done. (Yeah, I graduated in 1989, but I was technically a senior for the 87-88 year. My school was ass-backwards. Instead of keeping me back in the ninth or tenth grade, when I really should have been kept back, they just kept advancing me. This meant I had two senior years, which, looking back, wasn�t such a bad thing).

Do you know how hard it is to get your hair that big? Do you know how hard it is to keep it that big in the middle of an August heat wave? Do you know how hard that hair was? You can probably see the hole in the ozone directly over the house I grew up in from the hairspray I used to use.

And, that was my last big layered haircut. I began growing the layers out after I saw that hideous pic, and by the spring of 1988, I had nice long hair with just a little poofy foofy on top.

Anyway, enough about the hair. Let�s have a look at some of the comments in my yearbooks. 1989 clearly has the most incriminating stuff written, but 1988 has it�s share too.

From Dieter: �Well, the year is over. Have fun and party a lot. Remember �JOCKS�!�

Um, I wish I could remember what the joke was. I know there was one, but I�ve forgotten.

Oh, here�s a good one from 88, from Marcy: �Hey Dude! Well, we never got stoned together. How about tomorrow or Wednesday. Psych was a blast. I�ll never forget how fucked up you were when you came in here! Take care! We�ll have to party sometime. Love, Marce, the bakester�.

Love to have the boys find that. Marcy and I did get stoned the next day, behind the school. Then we hit the caf and chowed. Then I went to math class (my teacher was �Shakey Dave� an old man who�s name wasn�t Dave, but that�s what we called him, we thought he was always having the DTs) and fell asleep and one of the guys in class swiped my camera and took a pic of me. If I knew where it was right now, I�d scan it. Funny shit.

From Linette: �Remember all the �wasted� days in psych!�.

Psych was first period, so I showed up fucked up a lot. However, since I loved the subject and was naturally good at it, I got an A. One of my few from high school.

Hee hee, more psych notes, from Sue: �Get baked in psych much?�.

Um, was it THAT obvious? Neither Sue nor Linette even smoked pot!

From Scott, the extremely hot, extremely sexy sophomore swimmer who I had a secret affair (he had a gf) for the end of the 88 school year: �I will see you next year. Have a great summer. Keep in touch OK. Hope to see you soon (ha ha). Love, Scott� followed by his phone number and �just in case you lost it�.

There�s a story for another time. He was fucking smoking hot. Did I mention he was a sophomore to my senior? I still have the notes we passed back and forth during one of our classes, and they were hot. HOT, HOT, HOT. So what if he was 15 and I was 17? I got to �train� that guy!

From another Scott, one of the coolest guys I knew in high school: �Let�s make sure we keep in touch so we can get baked together ten years from now�.

We never did. I haven�t seen him since 1990 or so.

That 1988 book was lame. 1989 needs to be put in a safe to make sure the boys don�t find this shit.

I have no idea who wrote this, but it�s sprawled right across the inside of the cover:

�SMOKING A FAT JOINT LACED WITH ACID. YEE-HOO!!�

Hee hee hee, from Lance, who sat next to me in English and cracked my ass up every day:

�Even though you like Sean Asshole so much, it makes ME hurt, I suppose it�s alright. Don�t get pregnant until you�re ready. Lance M, the professor. PS: SEAN IS GOD�.

This is the guy who wanted me and the girl who sat next to us to get it on, so we could give him his own �lesbo lickfest� show. We never did, but every time I saw him after, all I could think to say to him was �lesbo lickfest�. Useless information, stuck in my head.

From Kevin, who I think wrote the bit about the joint laced with acid, �Be sure to smoke a surplus of pot this summer�. I did. That summer and a bunch after. Heck, last summer I did.

This guy, Keith, was a punk rock hunny: �Well, I appreciate you leaving me a prime space to write. But anyways hope you have a fulfilling life. Ha ha big joke, get fucked up and screw work!�

Ah, the future of the nation. Wait! That was 15 years ago. Now that is the nation!

From Bobby: �Stay out of trouble. Don�t smoke too many herbs�

Yeah, Bobby, you wouldn�t want me to hog it all, right!

This is from Mark, and is by far one of my favorites: �Zinga buddy, keep zingin� cause I will. don�t lose touch cuz I love ya. Good luck in the future. Love, ya, Mark�.

Mark was one of the funnest people I ever met. He was a star wrestler on the wrestling team. We took a lot of acid together, which we referred to as �zingin� and we were �zinga buddies�. He was a great guy. He died in late 2002. After high school, he enlisted in the Marines and after he got out, he headed to Alaska to be a fisherman. He was the captain of his boat, and it got lost at sea in a storm. RIP, Mark, we still talk about you all the time.

I know everybody that I didn�t like in high school, because I have lots of photos in the books marked, �SLUT�, �PIG�, �LOST�, �BITCH� and �ASSHOLE�. Potheads had joints drawn on the corners of their mouths. Hot guys were labelled �HOT� and cool people labelled �COOL�. Oh and if I just knew them, I underlined their names. I can�t tell you how many folks are underlined, and I look at them and think, �I knew them? How?�

I�m sick of going through the fucking yearbooks now. I do have to say that the lyric sheet to our class song, �Forever Young� (which, what the fuck? Stupid song much? The Class of 1990 had �With a little help from my friends� and we get �Forever Young�? And we changed the lyrics while we sang, to �Forever Drunk�. Ah, the future of the nation!)is in the yearbook, kept only because I folded up some weed in it, and you can still see where it was.

There were a few guy friends of mine that came up with this one stupid nickname for me. Having the first name �Jackie�, you can imagine I�ve been called everything and anything that starts with �Jack�. Jack ass, Jack o lantern, jack shit, I�ve heard it all. But these guys started calling me �Jack-me�. Yup, so I�d be walking through the halls and guys would just randomly yell, �Hey, Jack me!�.

So, I had this one friend. Let�s call him �Doobie�. Because that�s what we called him. Doobie was a classic mooch, and we hung out with him because he was good at tracking down drugs with no money. Anyway, Doobie is still stuck in my head to this day. First off, he made up the nickname Jackme. One day, after we got high as kites, he said to me, �Imagine if you were on the hood of someone�s car, and they didn�t want you on it, and they said, �Jack me, off!��.

This is the same guy who re-wrote lyrics to songs and sang them so often, that they are permanently ingrained in my head to the Doobie lyrics. Especially every single song form the Grateful Dead�s �Skeletons in the closet�. �Sugar Magnolia�, for example. One line says, �She can dance a cajun rhythm�. Doobie lyrics, �She can smoke a cajun jibbah�. We even went so far as to refer to joints as �Cajuns� because of that.

More from �Sugar Magnolia�: Original lyric: �Saw my baby down by the river�. Doobie lyric: �Saw my baby smoking a jibbah�.

Isn�t it kind of weird that he re-did the lyrics of Grateful Dead songs to make drug references? I wish I had �Skeletons� because I could come up with more Doobie lyrics.

15 years and these lyrics are still stuck in my head. Doobie lives in the same town as me, but I don�t see him. Smokey does all the time, so I know what Doobs is up to, anyway. Still mooching.

Yeah, lots of stuff the kiddos don�t need to know about until they�re older. Much, much older. Then I�ll let them know exactly what I was like back then. You know, once they�re all graduated from school and moving on with their incredibly productive lives. I hope.

Anyway, I�m outtie. Ciao!

Listening to: Incubus. "Wish you were here". That Brandon is such a cutie.

Currently reading: NHS Class of 1989 Yearbook. We had a gymnastics team?!? Who knew? Not me!

Thinking about: How the fuck did I make it this far? HOW? I must have killed every brain cell I had back then. I swear.