Yearbooks

On the news this morning I was treated to the anchor's pre-commercial sound bite about a high school that was recalling its yearbook because the yearbook contained "child pornography." That was it. No additional information. No clarification. A high school yearbook contained child pornography.

I immediately came to the conclusion during the commercial break that some demented pervert of a photographer wasn't satisfied enough with legitimately taking photo after photo of boys and girls under the age of eighteen, he had to insert into a school's yearbook some disgusting pic of a half-naked, hairy, fat man rubbing lotion on a similarly unclothed young boy. I thought it had to be something along that line. Maybe he was a former student of the school who was teased and taunted because he spent more time in the A.V. room than on the football field. Sweet revenge...he comes back to the very school that destroyed his adolescence and sabotages the book that captures for eternity the youthful, unsullied memories of these unsuspecting teens. That bastard!

Then the reporter came back on and washed that filth from my mind. Sort of.

The story progressed into one in which a photo of a school dance contained a boy and a girl allegedly engaged in a "sexual act." The kids are in the background, out of focus and unidentifiable, and most reports I heard or read indicated you had to be looking for it to see it. To the trained eye, however, something was going on that looked like a hand going up a skirt and the conclusion was that it was inappropriate for a school yearbook. School officials subsequently called for students to return their yearbooks for editing, which I can see as a reasonable response. Where the story took a turn for me was when the school and law enforcement officials, quoting the letter of the law, said any student not returning their yearbook could face the possibility of criminal charges for possession of child porn.

Okay, first of all, a teenage boy with his hand up the skirt of a teenage girl at a school dance - however inappropriate that is, and as a father with a daughter, it is - isn't child porn. Calling it child porn is gratuitous, misleading, and flagrantly irresponsible reporting for the sake of ratings. Second, any reporter, any cop, or any lawyer or judge who has been to high school has either a) been a party to this type of activity, b) attempted to be a party to this type of activity, or c) was too much of a dweeb to do or be a party to this type of activity, wishes they had been, and now condemns this type of behavior out of spite. Third, as soon as the first kid gets charged with possession of child porn the entire school faculty and yearbook staff involved with the yearbook project should get charged with distributing child porn because they made it and sold it. My personal opinion is that the school administrators, upon realizing they didn't do their job, are now using the threat of criminal sanctions against the kids to save their own asses.

Enough said. Almost.

Naturally, I did what I suspect many people did when they heard about this story. I pulled out my yearbooks and started skimming the pages looking for porn and other inappropriate, offensive pictures. Here's what I found:

Needless to say, I was shocked to find a picture of a

pussy in my high school’s yearbook. I’m still 
waiting for the vice principal to call me.

A boy in a unitard mounting another boy in a unitard from the rear.

A boy holding a girl in a headlock and simulating shooting her in the head with an imaginary gun.

The Thespian Club.

A football player with his hand on his crotch with the caption, "I must have fumbled it."

A shop teacher with his hand on the thigh of a very hot, very blonde, cardboard cutout of a woman advertising Blue Nun wine.

Four shirtless boys sitting on the edge of a swimming pool - and I can't see if they are wearing swim trunks - with five more shirtless boys in front of them in water above their waists - and I can't tell if they're wearing swim trunks nor can I see their hands, but all five have big smiles.

And...a photo of a school dance which has, in the background, an unidentified boy engaged in a sexual act (kissing) with an unidentified girl. And I guarantee that as close as the other boys in the photo are dancing with their dates, they're sporting various degrees of wood.

I didn't see the offending "porn" photo in this particular school's yearbook. To what degree it is or isn't offensive is subject to interpretation. I suspect the reason why the school presented the matter with the threat of arrest was because asking would have encouraged non-compliance. These are teenagers so, duh, there would be those students who would feel like they owned a very special memento of their school year - maybe their last school year - and not care too much about wiping off the egg that landed on the faces those responsible adults who graded them down on reports and projects for lack of attention to detail. Me thinks me sees a bit of irony there.

It's hard to say if anyone would have given a shit had the matter not been publicized. What would probably have happen to those yearbooks would likely be the same as what happened to mine...two weeks later they'd end up on a shelf or in a box and wouldn't be worth another look until that one day, thirty-plus years later, when someone points out there is a picture on a page in a yearbook somewhere of a boy and a girl doing something kids shouldn't do. And then they'll do what I did.

I got my books out of the box, dusted them off, and found pictures. And looking through my books I see pictures that today would be seen as offensive to society's morals. I see snapshots of a time when we weren't any more innocent, but we were a lot more open minded and clearly a lot less anal. Finished, the books go back into the box so they can collect more dust. Maybe my kids will eventually find them and scan the pages. They'll no doubt laugh at our hair and clothes, and probably comment about how old we look now or how young we looked then. They'll see the picture of the dance, but won't notice the boy kissing the girl. Or if they do, won't care.

The school's threat to the kids and parents, sadly, was bigger than their apology, which as I write this I haven't heard or read. Maybe those educators should dust off their own yearbooks and let the kids judge them. If they can find the box they're in. Because yearbooks, like a lot of things kids get from school, will mean nothing more in two weeks than they will in thirty years.

Unless part of that thirty years is spent in prison on a child porn possession conviction.