Dear Readers: “Savannah Parents” wrote to express their disapproval of the X-rated remarks their son’s classmates had written in his yearbook, citing wisecracks and offensive comments. I received a variety of reader reactions:
Dear Abby: In response to “Savannah Parents,” who disapproved of the X-rated comments written in their son’s yearbook:
I am a high school junior and have bought a yearbook each year. I, too, have had classmates write X-rated stuff in my yearbook, but it was meant for my eyes-not my parents’. What’s done has been done, but in the future, I’d let my parents see my yearbook first, then have my classmates sign it.
Heather Carnes, Gainesville, Fla.
Dear Abby: I recently graduated from 8th grade, and I can understand how these parents might not have appreciated some of the comments written in their child’s yearbook, but the book belongs to their child-not to them. Maybe he wanted to remember his friends the way they were. Perhaps that would include some off-color jokes, but the signatures and comments should be private memories. The parents said the comments ruined the whole yearbook. Well, the comments were not meant for them.
Talia Epstein
Dear Abby: I just got done reading the letter signed “Savannah Parents.” They said their son’s yearbook was ruined by some off-color language.
A few years ago, there was one particular student who wrote the rudest and grossest comments-covering two whole pages in my yearbook. When my parents saw this, they called the principal, and the boy who wrote that X-rated stuff had to buy me a new yearbook.
Middle Schooler in Virginia
Dear Abby: I have a question for “Savannah Parents,” who were ticked off at the X-rated comments written in their son’s yearbook: Parents, what were you doing looking in your son’s yearbook in the first place?
As a teenage girl, I find it absolutely aggravating that my parents “just have to” look through my yearbook. If my friends feel like writing X-rated comments in my yearbook, then that’s what they’ll do! High school is the time for these things . . . and you have no business deciding what should be in your son’s yearbook.
What you call “cursing” wisecracks and off-color jokes are inside jokes and inside teenage stuff. I am 15 years old, and when I have kids, I’m not going to look in their yearbooks!
Letitia K. Opson, Seattle
Dear Abby: President Eisenhower stands in good company with many Americans in his frank and enlightening comments on war.
Gen. Omar Bradley said: “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we do about peace. We know more about killing than we do about living.”
Gen. Douglas MacArthur said of himself: “Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would gladly yield every honor which has been accorded me in war.”
David and Laura Spivak, Pittsburgh
