high school horrors, junior year

So I stumbled across my junior year yearbook today.

Well, that is, if stumbling involves saying to your beloved out of the blue, “Hm. Wonder where my junior yearbook is?” and schlumping up the stairs, then rummaging in a closet and dragging out box after dusty box of mortifying personal ephemera, then yes, I totally stumbled across my junior year yearbook today.

Right off the bat, I feel I must confess that I was on this yearbook staff and I don’t say that to brag. Au contraire, pippa. I say that only because it means in some part, I share culpability for the cover, which will forever and always look like this:

You’d think such a brazen hussy orange might have faded a bit over time, but, nope. Still the same shade as the day I got it 173 years ago.

Now our yearbook was called “Ragnarok,” which means “Hark ye, Norsemen! Yonder approaches giant orange flame ball to engulf our plastic Viking ship and lead us to an initially fiery — then increasingly watery — grave!” I also heard it meant “the end of the beginning” or “the beginning of the end” or some such blather. Both of which seem right somehow, no matter where you went to high school. So we were the Norsemen. The mighty-mighty, black-and-orange Norsemen. Please picture, if you will, our despised and despicable football team in this precise shade of orange. Then picture, if you please, our water polo team — our county-wide championship water polo team — in their choking orange Speedos. Just the color I want to see cradling all that is manly.

Here I am, on the right, posing for the yearbook staff page with some other chicks whose names escape me, so let’s just call them Becky and Bonnie. What doesn’t escape me now, and didn’t then, is the fact that it was clearly striped-turtleneck-and-tight-vest day and those beyotches, Becky and Bonnie, did not bother to mention that to moi. Sadly, since I was not informed of STATV Day, I was left to my own feeble sartorial devices. Which is not a good thing. Because — and I certainly can’t deny it in the face of photograhic proof — I obviously got up that morning, the morning of secret STATV Day, went to my closet, channeled my inner Armani, and said, “Hmm. I’m feeling a sort of preppy ski bunny vibe with a twist of Gene Simmons today!!”

Oh. Yeah.

And here’s an artist rendering of my Gene Simmons superboots with the man-eating heel, in case you can’t really see them:

Believe me. The man-eating, chew-you-up nature of my boot heels cannot be overstated. Totally practical for preppy ski bunny man-eaters like me. Good, too, for scraping paint.

So let’s review. Becky and Bonnie had called each other the night before and squealed, “Eeeeee! Striped turtlenecks! Tight vests! Don’t tell that other chick, ‘kay? ‘Kay! Eeeeee!” Or maybe it wasn’t “Eeeeee”; maybe it was “oooooh” or “wooooo” or “hahahahaha.” Well, it’s a theory, anyway. Whatevs. It all boils down to this: Those beyotches, Becky and Bonnie, were good to go with their secret sartorial scheme. I, on the other hand, on the outs and clueless, strutted from my house that morning, ready to, you know, rock ‘n’ roll all nite and party ev-er-y day.

That is, if you replace “rock ‘n’ roll” with “ski ‘n’ ski” and “party” with “study.”

At school, when I discovered Becky and Bonnie’s secret sartorial scheme, I felt a lot less strutty about pretty much everything in general. When the moment came to take the photo, Becky and Bonnie pushed their way front and center in their coordinated STATVs. I fell back, put on a game smile, and tried to hide my Gene Simmons superboots behind the bike.

But I still secretly loved them.

I wish I still had them.

My Gene Simmons superboots with the man-eating heel.

Eeeeeee!