Not It! Not It! Not It!

Yes, my dears, it's that time of year again when 18-wheelers  are dropping off yearbooks at schools across the land. My 1,300 or so books are supposed to be delivered at 8 a.m., giving us a week to get them sorted and ready for distribution day on Friday.

And, yes, I know you think I should be excited about it all, but, no siree, Missy, I'm not. Instead, I think I would much rather just set my hair on fire and run screaming from the building.

Remember, we call this YBP time--as in YearBookPanic time. (I've written about it before here and here.) The time when newscasters across the universe highlight  yearbook disasters and mishaps with live news reports at 5 o’clock, 6 o’clock and 10 o’clock. And, of course, just in case you missed it, stories get posted at nano-speed across the Internet.

Once again I spent most of my weekend trying not to hyperventilate or yell, "Not it! Not it! Not it!" as Monday closes in.

In previous years, there have been reports of altered photos, embedded profanities and clothing issues. Other than the controversy over including a gay student's photo in the yearbook at a Mississippi school, things so far have been remarkably quiet this year on the YBP front.

But it's still a tad bit early. I'm hoping it stays that way, but just in case, let me once more shout: "Not It! Not It! Not It!"

Yearbook Panic, Brown Bags & Underwear

I spent most of the weekend trying not to hyperventilate and trying, rather unsuccessfully, to ignore my annual YBP–as in YearBookPanic.

Forget the Y2K hullabaloo. Never mind the stock market meltdown. And don’t you even worry your pretty head about the Swine Flu Pandemic Panic.

YBP eclipses everything. Nothing–and I do mean nothing–quite sends chills up and down your spine like yearbook delivery time. (I’ve written about it before. Let’s all hope we can go another year yelling, “Not it! Not it! Not it!)

Apparently my sick, twisted friends over at my yearbook reps office didn’t think I was quite jittery and jumpy enough. No siree, Missy. They thought it would be hilarious to send me that CNN link about the girl from Florida who went to school sans underwear, sat in the front row for her club group photograph and now appears to have pulled a Paris Hilton-Britney Spears-Lindsay Lohan shot for all eternity in the 2009 Sickles High School Yearbook (minus, of course, any good fame or fortune).




Mom now wants the school to quit handing out the yearbooks, confiscate the ones already passed out and reprint the entire book minus the offending photograph.

Jeepers Creepers. Someone hand me a brown paper bag. So you can see why I can’t wait until the 1,300 copies of our 2009 yearbook appear at my schoolhouse door. I’m sure there’s a mistake or two somewhere in those 304 pages despite ordering everything checked and rechecked. We do name checks. We do hand gesture checks. We do fact checks. We check, recheck and check again.

But an underwear check? Goodness gracious.