Comparing yearbooks

The children came home with their high school yearbooks yesterday. My son's last, my daughter's first. Anna and I sat down on the sofa last night and looked at the book, page by page, commenting on the silly photos from spirit week, the pretty girls all dressed for the prom, the baby photos of Robert's classmates, the color photos of the seniors. We read the sweet messages from parents in ads and found each place where Robert and Anna are pictured in the book from the swim team to the Academic Excellence Society.
Thank God some things never change.
My children attend the same high school I went to, and although some of the experience is the same, much has changed, of course, since I graduated from Hunt in 1980. At that time, the computer we used in math class took up an entire room. There was only one of them, of course, and we had to turn in our homework on computer tape about the size of masking tape. My kids have their own laptops they use in class.
But we still all love a yearbook. We love to see our photos and the photos of our classmates through the years. We like the idea of documenting the clubs we were in, the clothing styles, the school's football season.
I pulled out my senior yearbook this morning and flipped through the pages. It no longer smells as fresh and new as Anna's crisp, white pages from last night. Mine is Vol. II; this year's is XXX.
A lot of years have passed, but my yearbook pages include color photos of the seniors, photos of the yearbook and newspaper staffs and silly photos from homecoming week. One page is devoted to fashion trends: add-a-bead and add-a-pearl necklaces, long skirts, monograms, ponytails and penny loafers and double-pierced ears. A photo in this year's Hunt yearbook features students with tattoos.
One other thing that's fun to compare between our books — a number of my classmates have children at Hunt right now. Susan Evett Boswell and Michael Boswell, Judi Bissette Etheridge, Tami Harmon Wiggs, Lynn Tucker Kyle, Mark Cunningham. I wonder if they enjoyed looking throught their kids' yearbooks as much as I did last night!