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Kids spend day signing off photo by Jim Craven Julian Isaacson, 14, signs a classmate's yearbook in the band room at Hedrick Middle School Friday, the last day of school. Hedrick gave students short class periods devoted just to exchanging signatures. Hedrick gives students time to fill each other's yearbooks before heading off to vacation By SUSAN JAY It's Julian Isaacson's last day at school, but he won't be lonely this summer -- he's got his yearbook. It's filled with fancy scribbles and funny sayings from friends, feverishly gathered and written Friday. As a last-day-of-school tradition, Hedrick Middle School students attended 20-minute classes Friday reserved just for signing friends' yearbooks. They even had a short class that day on what to write. In classrooms and hallways, students huddled, their heads bent and their hands writing furiously in one friend's yearbook after another. "It's kind of a tradition to go around and leave mementoes with each other," says Isaacson. The 14-year-old trumpet player is surrounded by fellow band members, comparing what people have written. "I don't like it when people just write `have a great summer,"' he says, so he reads off one of his favorites: "You are cool. You make the ladies drool. You're not a cow. I don't know how. I eat Kung Pao. In Chinese restaurants. Have a good summer." "We thought that was pretty funny," Isaacson says with a huge grin. For these modern-day teenagers, the old-fashioned yearbook signing still strikes a chord. "When we ever get lonely or miss each other, we'll just pull out our year book," Isaacson says. This year's eighth-grade class has 490 students, Principal Marjorie Lininger said. To better manage so many, the students were divided into four teams, each team of students taking math, English, social science and physical education classes together. "They're not just leaving their teacher," Lininger says, "but this wonderful, intimate relationship with their team." Across from Isaacson in the band room, Jill Martin wonders why someone wrote in her book, "cows rule," and "stay stupid." She came today with her face symmetrically covered with colored star stickers. When she reads her friends' zany blurbs, she says, "I just think of how much fun eighth grade was." Sarah Greyback, 13, stares over Martin's shoulder. She, too, wonders what some of her friends' notes mean. One wrote, "Have a gnarly summer you stud." Another wrote, "You're way nice, you have a cool dad." Greyback says shyly, but with pride, "Everyone remembers my dad. He was a chaperone." The red-haired flute player says she thought it was great spending the last day swapping yearbooks with friends to jot notes. In sixth grade, they didn't get yearbooks, she says, and last year she didn't know many people. But this time, her last year at Hedrick, "I know so many people, (the book) just kind of fills up really fast," she says. "After a while, you reread it, and it brings back all the memories." Lininger isn't left out as kids stop her for her autograph. She notices the students who are crying and the ones hugging each other because they won't be going to high school together. It's an emotional time for her and for the teachers, too, she says, because they know that the smart, the wise and the sensitive kids understand that eighth grade "is the last time they'll be children." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA