What I bring to my classes seems to run counter to the students' need to share the yearbooks. My curriculum gets dropped in a heartbeat for spirited words scribbled over photos. The yearbook is, after all, pure English. Condensed, detailed, often coded writing appears beneath beaming faces. Each individual has a chance to be just that, truly themselves, in a cavalcade of local characters.
People choose quotations to represent themselves.
Between friends, there are private jokes, secrets, and shared emotions. With acquaintances, with people on the edges of my understanding, those private phrases become puzzles. I figure out who W. T. is, or who the Slick Six are. I consider the characters I know and those I don't. I savor the differentiations, the small details that speak to truths about people.