Historical topics often bear an unfortunate reputation for blandness, tediousness, and –most inaccurately of all – irrelevance. It is a barrier that often results in (at best) a world of rich information left unexplored and (at worst) a detrimental ignorance toward the complex social and environmental processes that have contributed to our current reality. True, history can be a heavy subject; it can also be funny, lighthearted, and legitimately entertaining, and the latter can even serve as a comfortable introduction to less comfortable topics.
For today’s dose of lighthearted history, step back in time to the year 1975 and transport yourself to Clarence Fulton’s bustling school newspaper headquarters. A primarily student-run publication, Norm’s National News serves today as a window into the humour, concerns, and personalities of Vernon teenagers past. As you will see, some things are quite unique to the time – but many appear endearingly universal.
This year-end edition begins with a message from the retiring vice principal Mr. Smith, who references the Roman god Janus, a being with two heads that gaze into the past and future, to express his feelings about leaving Fulton: “In the past [my own Janus] can see fifty-nine years (believe it) of school in one form or another, and hundreds of nice students I have known. In the future he can see a long lazy period of not caring who is late for registration or who skips a math class.” To reiterate, Mr. Smith’s fifty-nine years of school began back in 1916!
Later, there appears an insightful survey about drug and alcohol use among Fulton students, where we learn that 48% of the student body had at some point attended school under the influence, 40% had started using tobacco in elementary school, and only 11% had (reportedly) never used marijuana before.
Between articles about Elton John, Olivia Newton-John, and horoscopes, reporters share student and teacher responses to various prompts. To the question, “What would you do with an xiphosura?” people answered, “throw it away,” “swallow it,” “assign it as homework,” “tell Strad to eat it,” and “play ping pong with it.” When asked to name their pet peeves, answers ranged from “myself” and “drinking (HA! HA!)” to “insincerity” and seven individual mentions of school-related subjects. Other pieces about student opinion are more indirect; at one point, the newspaper announces the names of boys who had been written about in the girls’ washroom (or ‘can’), the leading champion of which had been mentioned twenty-one times. Underneath this outstanding statistic is written, “We once again hope to have a guys’ can result for the next paper if you guys would only write on the walls. PLEASE.”
The paper is even complete with an advice column entitled “Dear Norm.” Norm responds to a wide variety of student woes and curiosities, and his answers are in turn snarky and sincere. He advises ‘Wondering’ about her troubles with her crush’s prominent moustache and writes, “This is a rare case of hair-lip-mania. What you should do is, every time he kisses you, close your eyes and think of him as Burt Reynolds.” Replying to ‘Broke’ about his predicament of too many interested girls and not enough date money, Norm touchingly comments that “A girl should go out with you for your personality and not your money.”
This stroll through memory lane suggests a comforting truth: that teenagers have long been as funny and expressive as they are now, and that even though their individual historical circumstances change, their attitudes and coping mechanisms are strikingly similar throughout time (we can all recall our own well-meaning Norms). In short, if life is getting you down, consider looking to the past for a chuckle and a word of wisdom.
Rebeka Beganova, Museum Ambassador