Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll is moving on from GEEZER FORENSICS to YEARBOOK FORENSICS. She writes:

Last week we had a lively discussion of Geezer Forensics, with many valuable contributions from commenters about their own encounters of the geezer kind with solid, unyielding pieces of furniture, sliding glass doors, boiling teacups, and the like.

Today, following the pathetic and ludicrous saga of Governor Coonhound (D) of Virginia, we will discuss Yearbook Forensics. Of course, by the time this runs on Friday, Dr. Bojangles the Baby Killer (D) may or may not have retired to spend more time with his family or work on his Moonwalk. Yearbook Forensics began with the Talmudic-level parsing of the Kavanaugh yearbook and has continued with the jaw-dropping photo in Governor Coonhound’s (D) medical school yearbook. As everyone knows by now, there is a fetching Klansman next to a live lawn jockey. Sometimes you see something and your brain cannot absorb it .“Well, for sure that HAS to be Photo-Shopped!” you think. But, no.

Let’s pretend for a nanosecond that neither idiot in the picture is the future Democrat Governor and Pro-Baby-Killing Pediatrician (Motto of his Pediatric Clinic: “If you don’t kill your inconvenient clump of cells by the time it’s been alive for 3 months, it’s gonna need some DPT shots. We can help!”). WHAT in the name of all that’s Holy, would have compelled a future doctor to think such a picture made a humorous addition to his personal page?

Let me be clear that I am not generally a fan of the “30 or 40 years ago this person said a naughty word or held a stupid political opinion” School of Inquisition. But, COME ON!! A Grand Kleagle AND a mortifying portrayal of a black person? SERIOUSLY???

In a typical high school yearbook, hormone-marinated youths delight in silly double entendres, braggadocio about their drinking and sexual exploits, at least 1% of which may have actually happened, and other childish nonsense. They are, after all, still technically children.

In my senior year high school yearbook, for example, several people have written “Take it easy on the boys this summer.” Was little Ammo Student a hottie from whom the boys were in grave danger unless she chose to “take it easy” on them? Oh, if only. I certainly aspired to that, but it was not to be. When you have an average-looking, argumentative, bookish nerd who had to work six days a week in her Daddy’s drugstore all summer long, it pretty much guarantees that the boys in her vicinity will be very safe indeed. At least for the summer.

Back to Yearbook Forensics. In case Hell does freeze over – what CAN’T Global Warming do?? – and the country decides it needs a “smart-ass” with no law degree, instead of a “wise Latina” as the next Supreme Court Justice, what would Spartacus, the Brilliant Drama Queen and Grand Inquisitor find in my yearbook?

To my horror, it actually LOOKS like there is a photo of me in blackface!!

There was a “service club” in school, Sigma Beta Phi, called a service club because sororities were disallowed in Minnesota high school, and I had just been inducted. There was, of course, hazing. The new pledges had to go “uptown” in 1963 metropolitan Alexandria wearing bizarre costumes of the leaders’ choosing. There I am, on the corner in my bathing suit, a grass skirt, and with the remains of a mud pack facial on my face (most had slid off). The mud pack was green, but it looks black in a black-and-white photo. It had absolutely nothing to do with race but try and convince a Twitter mob of that. Probably the grass skirt alone is enough of a cultural appropriation sin to sink my Supreme Court nomination.

I think I can kiss that lifetime job defending the Constitution goodbye. Crap. At least I have READ the Constitution and approve of it. Another point against me with the Democrats.

There is also a yearbook picture of me and several classmates in togas performing a little skit at the 9th grade Latin Banquet. My costume is a primitive rendition of a Roman centurion. Costume-making was never in Mama’s wheelhouse. At Hallowe’en she would just hand us all Bibles and send us out as Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am so skinny in the Latin Banquet picture that it looks like some fatuous celebrity should organize a benefit to convince Ethiopians to send money to feed me. No eating disorder – I ate like a horse – just very ACTIVE. It is pretty striking in general that in the early 60s almost no teens were overweight. Out of 236 kids in my class, only 3 or 4 were overweight.

It appears that I wandered into several of the group pictures to give the impression that I was very active in extracurricular activities in order to pad my college applications. If I ever attended a meeting of either the Library Club, or French Club, I have no memory of it, but there I am. At least I read books and spoke French. It’s a wonder I didn’t try to wedge my way into the photo of the Audio-Visual Club, the wrestling team or the Homecoming Court in a Burger King tiara.

My best girlfriends wrote pages and pages of well intentioned, affectionate drivel in the yearbook, evidently in preparation for long-winded, tearful bridesmaids’ speeches at wedding receptions. One did strike me: “Only those who have the patience to do simple things perfectly, will ever acquire the skill to do difficult things easily.” Which explains a lot that has gone awry in my life, in retrospect. “Patience” at anything is not my long suit. Oh well.

I have amended that to “Those who have the patience to do unpleasant things adequately should be paid way above scale to do them FOR me. Failing that, find a husband who understands technology and – as a back-up — live next door to a guy who can do home handyman stuff.” We have lucked out in both Minnesota and Arizona with finding that guy. Luckily, both of whom will work for food. Mine, at least.

Oh, I’ll end with my most embarrassing yearbook moment. A girl I did not recognize, but who clearly appeared to know me, asked me to sign her yearbook. I threw a Hail Mary: “How do you spell your name again?” “A-n-n.” “Oh, yeah, I figured that, but I thought it might have an “e” on the end.” Pretty good recovery, eh? I have no idea who she was to this day, but I did encourage her to “take it easy on the boys this summer.”

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