The wrongdoers at K&K continue to wipe the slate clean before the new year by atoning for past sins, mental lapses, compromised ethics and egregious errors in judgment.
When we were in Grade 12, our creative writing/journalism class was given the responsibility of putting together and editing our high school yearbook. It wasn't our choice, so we didn't really take a lot of pride in our job or the end product - particularly the task of proofreading the list of students in each grade. The job of typing the students' names went to a fellow named Hugh, who was a huge fan of the band Van Halen, both its earlier incarnation with singer David Lee Roth and its second version with singer Sammy Hagar. We knew Hugh was a big fan because of the 5150 T-shirt he wore every day and the penetrating expose he wrote for the school paper called "I Am the Biggest Van Halen Fan Ever."
The way our yearbook worked was if a student missed picture day, he'd still get his name in the yearbook, only with a blank spot where the photo would have been. After we received Hugh's typed list of students to proofread, we noticed some names of students we hadn't seen at our school before: Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar. Since their names were spread throughout different grades, it was easy to miss, and because we were bitter that we had to work on the yearbook in the first place we pretended we didn't notice either.
Shortly after the yearbooks were printed, someone informed our teacher about the Van Halen names that had been slipped in and Hugh was given a failing grade. "Did you know anything about this?" our teacher asked us. We shook our head and pleaded ignorance.
Sorry, Mr. Beck, for allowing the members of Van Halen to be listed as students in our high school yearbook, making a mockery out of our school when we knew full well what was going on and . on second thought, screw that. We aren't sorry. We think it's awesome that our Grade 12 yearbook has the names of Van Halen members hidden throughout its pages. It's one of the few things we are proud of when we think of our high school experience and we never pass up the opportunity to tell people this story or show them the raw evidence that Alex Van Halen, Eddie Van Halen, Michael Anthony, David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar are listed as students in our yearbook.
Sorry, Hugh, for not giving you the credit you truly deserved. You were a maverick.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
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