I recently received a correspondence from an old high school classmate of mine whom I haven’t seen in over 40 years. This prompted me to get out my old high school senior year book to figure out who this person was.

In reading through my year book, I had to smile at the signatures in my book. (It was a custom to have your year book signed by friends and classmates.) Most of the signers had the decency to sign their first AND last name or at least their first name and the year that they would graduate.

But, there were some who just signed their first name.  I guess they assumed that they were someone of such importance in my life that I would never forget them. Well, guess what, I have no idea who these people were.

First, there was Ann. She seemed to think that we were the best of friends. In actuality, I knew a lot of Ann’s back then. Some I dated, some didn’t. So, it could be any one of many. But, she wrote such nice things about me, so I guess that we must have hit it off.

Then there was Lyn. He/she too wrote like we were the best of friends and wanted to stay in touch. Again, I knew several Lyns , some male, some female, but like Ann, I don’t remember who he/she was. And, I couldn’t tell the gender by reading the signing. He/she wrote upside down in my year book. Maybe he/she was from “down under”. Who knows?  I guess we didn’t stay in touch.

Finally there was miss/mr foreign student, I guess. He/she wrote in a foreign language though I couldn’t tell what it was.  Her/his penmanship was so bad that it made it hard to identify the language of the writing. Even her/his signature was not recognizable. In reviewing all of the exchange students, I couldn’t match any of their names to the signature. I hope that we had as much fun as she/he said that we did.

While I am sure that all of these year book signers had the best of intentions, the fact remains that I don’t remember anything from my senior year in high school. I graduated, I guess. The rest is a blur.