In 1986, I showed up to high school as a naive, wide-eyed freshman. Within 2 weeks, they had numerous folders on the table for "club signups", and a lot of the clubs looked cool/interesting. I signed up for several.
Then I came to learn the painful reality. When I attempted to find out when most of these clubs met, I was given blank stares and "WTF are you talking about" looks. Indeed, most high school clubs are a sham, rarely (or never) meeting, simply a tool to pump up college admissions applications.
That didn't stop these clubs from occupying a healthy portion of the yearbook, complete with phony or trumped up descriptions of what they had done all year. I appeared in the yearbook pictures for the few clubs I joined which actually met a few times. It just felt absurd to get the yearbook and see myself in the picture, complete with phony description of all the fun I supposedly had with all of these near-strangers.
Two years later, as a junior, I decided that a good prank would be to appear in almost every single club picture. And not just appear, but feign expressions of boredom, excitement, confusion, anger, and everything else I could imagine. As most of these clubs rarely/never met, I figured that nobody would know that I wasn't actually a member, and nobody would know that I had appeared in all of the other pictures, as most students show up for their few club pictures and leave. Nobody would be aware of what I had done until the yearbook staff put the pictures together -- and by that point it would be far too late. Not only did I think this was amusing, but I thought it was also a fitting way to show what a sham all of these clubs were (though, to be honest, I really just wanted to pull a prank on the yearbook).
I was mostly a well-behaved student. This was the only day I ever ditched school, as the large number of pictures in which I appeared took just about the entire day.
There were actually two picture days. I estimated that I would get into about 25 pictures, but I was dismayed to find that I couldn't make the first picture day because the pictures for the "open" clubs (that is, ones where it wasn't clear who was and wasn't a member) interfered with two important tests I had those days. So I had to skip picture day #1. When picture day #2 came, I ditched every class, only showing up to check in and then tell the teacher, "I need to go take club pictures", and left for the entire period. I did this for all of the periods that day.
A few of these clubs I was actually a legit member (probably like 3 of them), but the rest I had never joined, nor did I have any idea what some of them were.
The only resistance I got was from another student -- the president of the Art Club who realized moments before the picture snapped that I had snuck in, and was furious. He and I almost got into a fistfight over it.
I also remember it was an unseasonably cold day in southern California -- something like 48 degrees, cloudy, and breezy, and I didn't love being out there for all those hours with my light jacket.
I also spawned a few imitators, who realized what I was doing. You will see some other guys in the pictures doing similar things as me (and appearing frequently), but none put the entire day into it like I did, so I appeared in the most.
When the yearbook staff realized what I had done, they were FURIOUS. These were mostly a bunch of pompous douchebags, so I didn't care what they thought of me. A few of them accused me of "ruining the yearbook", which was ridiculous, especially since the clubs were mostly a sham anyway, and this was something people would only notice if they looked carefully at every club picture.
Hilariously, the yearbook staff was so pissed about this that they set out to stop it the following year. In the next yearbook, they placed giant circles over the heads of people who "didn't belong" in the club pictures. They ended up doing this to some legit members, and the pictures just looked really odd with giant circles covering people's heads. So in attempt to stop me from "ruining" the yearbook the following year, they ruined it themselves.
The next year, I did try to break my own record of club picture appearances, but I was thrown out of the picture day after the 15th picture, after a fellow student tattled on me. I was threatened with detention if I appeared in another club picture, so I left, falling one short. There were many others attempting to beat my previous 16-picture record that year, but they were also thrown out.
Most of the other students in the school reacted positively to what I did, and I had a ton of people coming up to me to comment on it who I barely knew. I even had a guy add me as a friend on Facebook last year because he remembered what I did in the yearbook and he wanted me to know years later that he approved.
The 16 pictures follow.
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Originally Posted by Tyde
