When I came home on Friday, my daughter proudly handed me the new edition of the school yearbook. The new yearbooks are more bright, colorful, and insightful than my Hightstown High School 1987 edition where we barely got in photos of all of the varsity sports teams.
Like most yearbooks, photos were displayed of the different classes from seniors to freshmen. Sections showed photos of energetic students displaying school spirit and pictures of the best dressed to the class clown. After all of the normal content, I stumbled on to the next section where parents wrote heartfelt notes to their children along with pictures of the students with their family or even growing up as a baby.
What mystified me initially about this section is that some of the graduation notes were on a full blown page while others seem to be shrunk down to one-third or one-quarter of a page. I naively asked my daughter how the school went about deciding which students got this wonderful sign off. She promptly informed me that you have to BUY this advertisement if you want to write a note to your child! What!? I have to BUY you a love note at graduation?
I jokingly said to my wife, “How sad for the kids whose parents only love their kid’s one-quarter of page. What do you tell your friends whose parents love them a full page? Or even worse, what about parents that just don’t love their kids at all?”
Do we really need the pressure as an individual parent to have a ‘photo opp’ page in the school yearbook? When I grew up, they went to local businesses to sponsor the yearbook, not parents to create memory pages saying I love you. As with most parents who have children in high school, you’ve got lots of financial responsibilities while your child is a teenager and college is not far behind. It’s best to skip this yearbook exercise or you might go down as the parent that only loves your child one-quarter of a page.
Written by: Ted Jenkin
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