A Paean To Yearbook Nostalgia

There’s something about the passage of years that softens the trauma sustained at school, particularly during grades 11 and 12 when the girls had refined cliquey bitchiness to US teen melodrama intensity, and the boys used their man-grown strength to hurl basketballs with concussive force at students obliged to run the gauntlet each day. It was therefore with unexpected delight that I happened upon my old senior college yearbooks today and pored over them, exclaiming gleefully at each amusing recollection the faces and names evoked.

Some people I have no memory of whatsoever, and some images only stir up a vague feeling of, "he was nice," or, "BITCH!", but for the others, I have composed a little song, in variable metre, to be sung with appropriate smugness and schadenfreude where required:

Misty had sex
With my friend’s recent ex
At a party, under a tree.
The boys, they did see,
then shouted with glee,
And showered the couple in wee.

Marilyn seemed like a sensible girl,
She was studious, meek and mild,
So the news shocked us all when,
After the Ball, Ray got the ‘good girl’ with child.

There’s Basia, the cow,
So where is she now?
I heard her life’s gone in a ditch.
She went to the US,
Started stripping, no less,
That’s karma for being a bitch.

Everybody sing now:

Joe turned eighteen and he wanted a root,
So his mates all chipped in for a prostitute.

Bob won the FIGJAM award – what a louse!
It was I who left pooh-in-a-bag at his house.

Pete and May let it spread that they’d bonked at the pool,
Now she’s out of the closet and he looks a tool.
Then Peter, he really went right off the rails,
He got on the drugs and spent time in gaol.

There’s Dick – how ironic! – he measured his willy
And told us the length! That proves he was silly.

And Nell – I remember her foolishness now,
She truly believed bacon came from a cow.

Gary was caught in the toilets at camp,
Pulling it off like a wanking state champ.

Micky dropped out – what a pitiful creature,
He left school to become a line-dancing teacher.

When Jim graduated he soon found employ
Of the non-legit kind, as some woman’s toyboy.

There are so many more I would like to defame,
But alas! My rhymes are too poor and too lame.

All incidents and rumours are real, although names have been changed to protect the laughable.