PANDORA’S YEARBOOK

Mom, My Son Said, I’m Going to Need You to Go Full-Karen

Why was I so angry about a yearbook?

When I picked up my son from school today, he wasn’t there. I looked at my phone to see if he called. Nope.

In the old days, the pre-cell phone era, the 70s, a parent who didn’t see their child at pick up would have gotten out of the car, lit a cigarette, pulled their massive sunhat over their eyes, laid on the hood, and closed her eyes.

Maybe another mom would see her, think yay! party time, pick up a bottle of wine. They’d sit on the school curb until twilight, unconcerned about the whereabouts of their kids, who were fine. Everybody was fine. Life was fine.

A helicopter parent in those days was seen as a neurotic, an outcast. The cool devil-may-care moms would shake their heads at the overzealous mom who hadn’t heard about the women’s movement and thought it was still their job to over-parent.

Under-parenting was where it was at. Throw a juice bottle into the playpen, invite over some friends, light up a joint, build a bra-burning bonfire, and put on some Grateful Dead, vinyl.

When it got dark, a mom might yell at an errant kid, “Have you seen Jake?”

Kids back then had tracking devices in their souls. The kid would say I saw Jake by the 7-Eleven or Jake rode his bike into the cemetery about an hour ago, or Jake’s drag racing by the interstate on his Schwinn. Times were simple.

When I yell out my window now, a kid opens his phone and says, “Hold on. Let me track’m.”

“You’re tracking my kid?” I ask perplexed.

“Yeah, we’re friends,” the kid says. It weirds me out, so I tell the kid I got a phone too. I can handle this, but thanks. I don’t have a tracker, but does that make me a bad mom? Do good moms track?

I call my son, Jake. “Where are you?”

“Someone stole our yearbooks,” he said. We’re all going to the office.”

I am immediately pissed. This had been a year. Swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti in the bathroom, nooses hanging outside of schools, school shootings, and now two days before school, my kid's yearbook is stolen. He was looking so forward to it.

I never loved yearbooks, but they seemed precious now. So much of childhood has been diluted. These kids have active shooter drills, wear masks and worry about death way too much. His yearbook felt sacred. I wanted some normalcy for him.

This is also the first year my kid embraced friends full-on. He used to be shy. Jake’s an only child who likes hanging out with his parents. We laugh. We watch Agents of Shield and play guess the next line because the script is so predictable. We have different enough personalities, so we don’t get triggered by each other. We try to turn fights into jokes. Sometimes we can’t, but we try.

Until COVID, Jake didn’t appreciate the awesomeness of friendship. He told me he didn’t appreciate how awesome people were, how awesome friends were. He took it for granted, but since COVID, he’s always happy to see people. It means the world to him.

This was Jake’s first yearbook. He couldn’t wait to get signatures. When it was stolen, he already had fifty, he said. Someone had ravaged their backpacks outside during gym. He was holding back tears.

Right before I picked up Jake, I had just gone swimming for the first time in a month. I had just started swimming again after taking two years off because of the pandemic.

I’m a mermaid. Water is home. I also swim too hard and sometimes, when I am finished with a workout, my endorphins make me crazy and I could knock out a mugger in an alley or flip off a soccer mom who cut me off.

But there was no mugger or soccer mom. There was only the missing yearbook and I could have strangled a squirrel, after chasing it up a tree. I was filled with the kind of juice that made Lance Armstrong win the Tour de France 4,000 times.

“That's it,” I said. “We’re transferring you to a Catholic school.” I was so sick of public school and how out of control it had gotten since the pandemic.

“Aren't those schools religious?” asked my secular child.

“Not anymore,” I said. “Not since everybody from every religion transferred to them during COVID. Now they’re religion-lite.”

Catholic School is the new white flight in my suburban neighborhood. People moved to the suburbs to get away from city schools but it wasn't the cut of cookie they were betting on.

City ex-pats didn't like all the LGBTQ+ centered curriculum. They didn’t like Black history being integrated into the curriculum. They didn’t like all the AP classes vanishing in the name of equity. I said “Good riddance” to them all, happy to lose the intolerant.

I had resisted deserting our public schools as people ran as fast as their a la carte education legs could carry them. But, suddenly, somehow, the stupid missing yearbook was pushing me over the edge.

What the hell was it about me and yearbooks? I almost tossed mine out but a friend said, “You might want to look back at those one day.” I didn’t believe her but she seemed so certain I would regret it, I told myself I’d hold onto my yearbooks a little longer.

I was once at the Goodwill with another friend who saw some old yearbooks and made a very sad face. “That’s tragic,” she said, “that no one wants those.” I didn’t agree but she seemed so convinced, I wondered if I were the one with the emotional ailment.

Yearbooks triggered me. Everyone I ever despised was contained in those books. There were also many people I loved in those books, but I kept track of those people. They were still my friends. My enemies still lived in those books.

Yearbooks, to me, were Pandora’s Box. Open them and all sorts of evil shit could fly out. They shouldn’t be donated to the Goodwill. They should be set aflame and shoved out to sea with a proper Viking burial.

“Do they have security cameras at Catholic Schools?’ my son asked, thinking his yearbook might not have been stolen if his school had more security cameras.

“Better,” I said. “They have nuns.”

We drove home, my son devastated, red-faced and teary. My blood was the temperature of paper when it burns.

“This year sucks,” he said. “School is too easy. My gym teacher is a sexist racist. All we do is watch movies in class. Now my yearbook is gone. I’m done for the year. Is that okay?”

There were two days left. “Yeah, fine,” I said. “You’re done.” I was serious. I was like fuck that place. “What kind of a school has kids who steal yearbooks?!”

Again, why was I so obsessed with yearbooks? I felt there was some sort of transference occurring. I do live in a perpetual state of denial. I am always at risk of an occasional emotional leak brought on by unexamined rage.

When we got home, my son looked at me and said, “Mom, I’m gonna need you to go full-Karen on this. I need you to find my yearbook.” My rage thanked him.

“I got this,” I said. “I’m already on it.” The principal and the school secretary's emails were already on my screen.

Because I have a good relationship with both of them, because I am pretty good at holding back my well-cultivated fully nurtured Karen, I kept it simple.

My son’s yearbook was stolen. Could you please look into this? It’s such a sad way to end the year.

Swastikas, nooses, shootings, locked downs. Why the yearbook? Was my yearbook rage the only thing that happened this year I could stomach? Were the other events too devastating? If I thought about anti-Semitism, racism, and shootings, would I be able to get out of bed? No. Yearbooks, I could handle.

My full-Karen is rather benign. Though I have been raised in a world I might be identified as a Karen, I’ve never fully committed because I reflect on my behavior when I’m a dick. And because my son won’t allow it.

Usually, when my son sees my hackles rise up about a warm cappuccino, he tells me to lock that Karen shit up. Or if he doesn’t get to me in time, my son says “Mom, you were such a Karen” and I feel shame.

Life is about who you become when your back is up against the wall. Are you noble? Do you roll with the punches? Can you maintain perspective? How mad do you get about a yearbook?

I got on my Facebook group, specifically the group connected to my son’s school.

Hey parents. My son’s yearbook was stolen. We are so sad. If anyone knows anything about it, can you let me know? He was really looking forward to getting signatures and already had some.

What was I looking for? Detectives? Therapy? Soothing? Was I looking for people to feel sorry for me? Was I looking for camaraderie?

What do Karens want when they reach out into the world and ask for the manager?

I’m not an oversharer on Facebook. When people put up personal details, I flinch. That’s how I was raised. Like a spy. Keep it inside. Nobody's business. Sharing exposes you to the elements. It’s like acid rain, or radiation, or flashing someone in an elevator.

I hoped making an announcement on Facebook was full-Karen enough for my boy. It was as full-Karen as I was willing to go. I wasn’t going to get anyone fired or start a revolution. I was letting the world know something bad happened to me and I was hurt. That seemed at least Karen-lite. Diet Coke Karen.

I received an onslaught of responses from people whose names were familiar to me. People were enraged on my behalf. I’m furious Facebook moms wrote. Why oh why would anyone steal a child’s yearbook?

Did it feel better? A little.

That night at dinner, my son said he felt better now. He was fine, sad but fine. He also said it wasn’t fair that some kids can’t afford yearbooks. We talked about how it must have felt for kids, who couldn’t get yearbooks, to watch other kids getting signatures all day.

Jake said, “I don’t think kids stole it because they needed a yearbook. I think it was a prank, but still, it’s unfair that everyone doesn't get one.”

We went back on the Facebook group and asked if anyone was interested in fundraising so no one had to be without a yearbook in the future. I wasn’t mad about yearbooks anymore. I was happy my kid got to the other side, just like that chicken who’s always trying to cross the road.