It's Yearbook Season.

Since it’s that time of year, let’s talk a little today about milestones.

Last night was my fourteen-year-old daughter’s eighth grade “promotion” ceremony. The word “graduation” seems to get tossed around so much these days. Between preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school, yesterday marked our ninth such ceremony. 

Holy sweet father of T-ball trophies, what's next? At this rate it won't be long before maternity wards start broadcasting “Pomp and Circumcise” through the corridors.

So yeah, the past couple of weeks have been heaped with one everyone-gets-a-badge-uation after another.

(At this point, please insert the inquisitive tones of “Dateline’s" Keith Morrison): But there’s another historic way station lurking in the milky dusk of a bygone decade—

Twenty years ago this week, on June 17, 1994, O.J. Simpson performed his hour-long Ford Bronco infomercial. With his friend Al, a wad of cash and a gun to his head, Simpson took 95 million of us on a slow ride to the intersection of Holy Shit I Never Knew O.J. Was a Psycho Boulevard, and like, Sepulveda.

Along with most of the world, I initially believed the whole situation was a misunderstanding. How could this All-American football-star-turned-actor possess the capacity for such savagery? 

As a kid, I worshipped the guy like subsequent generations idolized Micheal Jordan and Tom Brady. I’m not proud of this now, but check it out—I even wore his shoes:

Originally intending to write exclusively on the Broncoversary and my childhood worship of O.J., once I pulled out that old yearbook, I was instantly distracted. To hell with O.J. Simpson, I thought, let’s talk about something more relevant. 

Think back to those warm, waning June days, when the work was done, and our sole responsibility was attaining as many heartfelt dedications as could be crammed into a 64-page hardbound time capsule.

Every adolescent message you are about to read was written by classmates now in their fifties. Since so much time has passed and most legal statutes of limitation have expired, I decided to include names. You may see something you wrote thirty-six years ago. Let’s just hope you were nice to me.

The following are excerpts from the pages of the 1977-78 Olympic Junior High annual.

I still haven't tried Caryn's recipe because the only place that sells giggles is Whole Foods, and they're organic and really expensive.

Happy yearbook season.

Help Me Pick Up the Pieces.

Your time is valuable. I understand this.

But I need your advice regarding something that happened today. Seriously, I wouldn’t be asking if I didn’t need you to unleash your hounds of wisdom upon my tender pink meat of ineptitude. 

Here’s what happened: 

Every morning, I drive my fourteen-year-old daughter to middle school. Usually, by the time we've come within a couple blocks of our destination, the roads have already become clogged with cranky chauffeurs and their pubescent offspring. 

You know how school zones are supposed to work, where the speed limit is twenty when children are present? We’re implored to gingerly maneuver our vehicles through the clouds of Axe body spray and foggy-eyed adolescence as America’s future shuffles into the building with neon Cheeto fingers and the raw funk of pituitary promise. 

Yeah, not at this school. It’s an all-out “I’ve-got-six-minutes-to-get-to-work-if-you-get-out-while-we’re-moving” mentality. Cars stop in the middle of the street; kids dart in front of you, brushing your hood with scuffed clarinet cases. This three-minute taste of the Apocalypse is overwhelmingly the most dangerous part of my day. 

This morning, we’d just entered the hot zone and had elevated to alert level Orange, similar to the Bush-era system, yet not stupid and ineffective. 

I wasn’t driving fast, which is probably why we didn’t collide. The Honda minivan was pulled over, its front wheels pointing toward the street. As I juked slightly to the left to pass, the vehicle abruptly accelerated into my path. 

I leaned on the horn and stomped the brakes, our rusty minivans jerking to a stop and forming a “V” in the middle of the street. The driver’s eyes locked onto me. She scowled and pulled away, exhibiting a gesture possibly only recognizable to the indigenous herders of Lapland.

Oh yeah, plus we knew this person.

“Oh, my God, Dad. That was Chrysanthemum (not her actual name).”

“Sure is,” I said. “Chrysanthemum needs to look before she pulls out.”

I wasn't sure how to feel. I was embarrassed yet certain the mishap was her creation. My daughter and I have known her and her daughter for five or six years, yet until this morning hadn’t been on the viewing end of her axe murdering face. Regrettably, that one wasn't on the old bucket list.

So what the hell do I do now, get her a freaking Starbucks card? Nah. 

After pondering my choices, after jotting out T-charts and crunching numerous cost/benefit analyses, I’ve whittled my options down to the following:

1) Apologize. Maybe I was driving a tad bit aggressively, and therefore am partly responsible for the near miss (Or, as George Carlin once said: “That’s not a f—-ing near miss. That’s a f—-ing near hit.”).

2) Do nothing. Act as if it never happened and distract Chrysanthemum with a smothering bear hug next time I see her. People love my hugs, you know.

3) Egg her house.

I’m leaning toward a combination of 1) and 3), but I’ll hold off until I hear your suggestions.

When your child is busted for dealing.

Remember middle school?

Remember how that adolescent crock pot, whose initial ingredients are anxiety, fear and insecurity, is switched on to the "low" setting during September, then slowly percolates for one-hundred-eighty days?

The eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-olds who occupy this bubbling cauldron are forced to mingle, simultaneously detesting each other and magnetically clinging together through unbridled animal magnetism.

Welcome or not, the tweener faces a roster of new found companions, from the peer-inspired introductions of eye makeup and deodorant to the cold morning reckoning of a fresh pimple below the left nostril.

Pressures abound. The adolescent dress code prescribes apparel which is flashy enough to not stand out.

Late for class? You run, you're done.

Want to save face? Better join Facebook.

What do you need? I know someone who can get it for you.

Okay, here's my point: my sixth-grade daughter has succumbed to the temptations of tweendom...and she's been caught.

I know, she's only eleven, and I never expected for this to happen, especially at such a young age, but what parent does?

All the signs were there—she started hanging with a new kid, even on weekends, and she'd spoken the names of boys and girls whom I'd never heard mentioned previously.

So, yeah, color me ignorant.

Then her English teacher called, day before yesterday. My wife answered.

"Hi, Terri, this is Kathy James."

"Hi, Kathy, how are you?"

"Oh, I'm okay. I just thought I should fill you in about something that Brittany (not her actual name) has been involved with at school."

"Oh, what is it? Has she been disrespectful?"

"No, she's a very nice girl, but she's been violating school rules and it needs to stop...

"She needs to stop selling cupcakes at school. They look beautiful, but we're not supposed to let the kids eat sugary snacks."

The jig was up.

For the past couple of months, my daughter's been running a black market cupcake operation within the hallowed halls of academia. Apparently, district policy dictates that only healthy snacks can be sold on school grounds; the vending machines provide baked chips, dehydrated fruit and juice as alternates to the fatty food stuffs and sugary soda of the past.

Throughout each school week, she and her friend have taken orders for weekend baking and Monday delivery. Quantity discounts don't exist; in fact, the opposite applies. Six cupcakes cost eight dollars, but twelve will set the sugar junkie back twenty.

Her teacher had thought she'd made it clear that the dealing was to stop, but evidently another teacher informed her that "the girl's still selling."

My wife and I, while proud of our daughter's entrepreneurial spirit, have told our little Mrs. Fields that she can still peddle her wares but must deliver them to the homes of her customers, and that we'll need to pinch a portion of her proceeds for gas money.

She wasn't too receptive to that idea. Since we've been springing for ingredients and delivery supplies, she and her friend have enjoyed a one hundred percent markup. Pure profit.

And because she's stopped soliciting orders, a few addicts have come out of the woodwork, some actually begging her to sneak a few baked goods into school.

Those customers had historically eaten their entire supply immediately upon receipt, and hey, I understand, because nothing matches the hell of cold turkey cupcake withdrawal. Nonetheless, her fledgling business has been ground up in the cogs of institutional control, and that in itself is a good lesson.

Now she's contemplating selling jewelry.

Trying on schools: One size doesn't fit all.

Every so often, we all get firmly spanked with the splintered paddle of mortality. And from my steadily graying perspective, the Grim Reaper's croquet mallet seems to whack me with ever greater frequency.

As I discussed in this post, my ten-year-old daughter and I have been visiting local middle schools recently. It's not like it used to be back in the day, when your elementary, junior high and high schools lay before you with greater certainty than the roof of your mouth being scraped to shreds from that second bowl of Cap'n Crunch.

We now have choices, which, I suppose, is good. My daughter already has a spot reserved in our neighborhood middle school, but we decided to perform this exercise as a backup plan, kind of like bringing two lighters with you on your way to the woods with a pack of smokes stolen from your mom's purse.

She and I had already checked out a small, private school, which we both liked a lot, but naturally would entail a sizable financial outlay.

We also had paid a visit to an alternative educational facility. Teachers and administrators were addressed on a first-name basis, the classes were quite informal and we were told that students embark on scores of camping trips and other excursions into nature. I can think of tons of kids who would love this type of program, but my little urban diva would not be one of them.

After watching a class discussion, with questions answered by children whose names were "Karma" and "Justice," we concluded that, although the building was great and the staff friendly and dedicated, it just wasn't our cup of herbal tea.

Our last school visit occurred on Wednesday, at the place she's slated to attend in the fall. After perusing the sixth grade section of the building, with stops at band, language arts and science classes, parents and students gathered in the cafeteria for a final pitch from our tour guide.

The counselor stood, surrounded by a semi-circle of visitors and listed the plethora of after-school clubs and activities available to students, including bus service afterward.

This is where the sale was closed.

"We've got so many great things for kids to do after school." He scanned the crowd to maintain eye contact. "There's steel drum band, chess club, math club, hip hop dance, hair styling..."

I felt a sharp poke to the side of my rib cage. My head reflexively jerked to the right to address the source of the irritation. She hoisted herself onto her tip toes and leaned into my ear. "Dad, I'm going to this school. I am so doing hair club," she whispered forcefully.

This wasn't a question, a suggestion or a request. "Okay," I mumbled back.

I visualized her, sometime in October, returning home around 4:30 and sporting Bo Derek corn rows or possibly a Ziggy Stardust orange mullet. Neither of us listened very intently from that point forward, since destiny had been acknowledged. We bid farewell to our host and walked silently to the minivan.

I had a moment.

Ten years ago, this girl I was walking alongside was a cackling toddler, able to insert a fistful of Cheerios, including fist, into her mouth. She was so dependent and fragile.

Ten years from now, this girl whose shoulders I placed my arm around, will be a young woman, possessing all of the rights and privileges of the full adulthood opening up before her. She'll be setting sail, and I'll be on the shore waving.

Sure, we've got some adventures ahead of us, but she'll never be a baby again.

She'll always be my baby, though.