I want to know who the hell came up with the concept of a yearbook. Who was the first person to say, "Let's take a picture of every student in the school, all the sports teams, all the clubs, and then sell it students that are in it for an arm and a leg"? It's a racket, for sure, and a successful one. The yearbooks at my school cost -- are you sitting down? -- $65. Each. The school I transferred from sold theirs for $20, but then the yearbook adviser was Mrs. Beckman-Clark-Beckman-Powell-Beckman, who was way too busy keeping up with her many marriages to devote the necessary time and attention to the annual's publication.

But in addition to being a moneymaking scam, the yearbook also serves as good PR for the school. Look at all these shiny, happy students being herded around like cattle! Our school is wonderful...or something. Curious, isn't it, that the yearbook doesn't have much focus on the academics of the school experience, but that's the way the tide has been turning. School is less about giving students an education than about fulfilling a legal requirement by running what amounts to a day care for teenagers. But no one likes to admit that, because it leads to a discussion about school funding and then we remember what a crappy state we live in. In other words, it's really depressing.

The yearbook doesn't have any spreads about skipping, which was my favorite pastime last year. Where are the action shots of cars speeding out of the parking lot, students calling their parents on the sly for rides, and me tumbling across the street and down the hill in a photo series, a la Charlie's Angels? Nowhere, because the school doesn't like to admit that they can't control the attendance problem. Instead, they have enacted a policy wherein seniors can leave early during the second semester, which I'd like to think my class pioneered.

There is a spread about the newspaper staff I was on, but it focuses on the awards that we won and not on all the deadlines we missed because we were playing Solitaire. There isn't even a blurb about the SADD chapter I helmed. There is only a picture, because they insisted on including us despite the fact that we didn't do anything all year. Well, I take that back. We had a bake sale one day during lunch, but we ate most of the inventory ourselves.

There is a spread about the government team, which has some good pictures of Schmitz, the team, and the DC trip. But it overlooks the controversy over Schmitz's resignation, the countless times the team used 'the government lie' as an excuse to get out of the house, and the madcap adventures we embarked on during the DC trip (lost in Chinatown, lost on the subway, lost in the hotel).

I guess what bothers me about the yearbook is that the yearbook has to answer to everyone. It can't be an honest, candid memory of the year. It has to paint the school in a good light. It's got a slant, just like all the other media. It's not that I'm shocked. It's just that there are so many more layers to the high school experience, all of which are worth commemorating, but the yearbook has to play it safe. Can you imagine a yearbook without prom pictures or a story on the football team? These are the things the yearbook has to be and we pay for it. We pay for it every year. We pay for memories that aren't even ours. It's the school's yearbook, not mine, as if the physical building were capable of emoting. In the end, the memories are our own and we're responsible for them. A camera is never around when you need one, and that's okay. The best memories are the ones never captured on film.

Reading: Still working on Getting Unstuck and two weeks of TV Guide. Watching: Finished Imitation of Life. Best line? Lana Turner to her African-American maid: "Well, it just never occurred to me that you would have friends." Listening to: Music from Beautiful Thing.