"HAGS"

Back when I was in middle and high school, I hated yearbooks.  My policy was "I've been at this wretched place for four years.  I will remember it plenty without the aid of a $110 paperweight."    My Junior year, my parents forced* me to buy a yearbook, which I have since thrown away.  Since then, I have never once, even for an instant, had anything resembling regret my decision to not get a yearbook.

[* And I do mean "forced".  I tried to warn them.  I do not feel at all guilty about wasting their money.  They wasted it.]

Despite this, I do not have a problem with other people getting yearbooks.  That's your prerogative.  And if you wanted me to sign it, I did.  However, every time I did, I saw an acronym for which I have an intense hatred, one I have not been able to fully vocalize until now.

"H.A.G.S.", or "Have a great summer", is awful.  First of all, it doesn't sound good.  It could easily be replaced by, say, "Have a nice summer", which forms the much nicer acronym "HANS".  That sounds much better.

Of course, my problem with it is not how it sounds, it is what it means: nothing.  It means nothing.  "Have a great summer" is bad enough, but some people decide four words is too much.  Four words.  So they go with "HAGS".  What are you saying with that?  I reiterate, nothing.  You are writing something down but you are saying nothing.  You are recklessly wasting ink.

"But what if I can't think of anything else to say?"
Then why on earth are you signing their yearbook?  Either you don't care about them, in which case you don't need to sign their yearbook, or you don't need to say anything else to them, in which case you don't need to sign their yearbook.

If you were taking a series of surveys which included the options "If 'yes', explain below; if 'no', continue to the next question," you would not check "no" and then add in the comment box "I have nothing to say here".  Or "IHNTSH".

And while I didn't have a problem signing people's yearbooks, I do still think of it as stupid for pretty much this reason.  If you're not going to remember the person, why get their signatures?  Why get their signatures in a particular book filled with signatures?  Couldn't it just as easily be accomplished by, say, blank paper, if there is something that cannot be said any other way?  I could buy that using the yearbook would save on paper if yearbooks did not now include about a dozen empty pages just for signatures.  And if you do want to remember them, then you already have a book with their picture in it.

I've been out of high school for a little short of a year now, and I've already started forgetting people.  Does this make me sad?  Do I wish I had some way to remember them?  No.  I don't care about them.  Hence "forgetting".  I can therefore save that brainspace for things like how to avoid hangover, which despite not drinking is still more personal and interesting than any of the brain-dead banshee seatfiller in my assorted classes.

Facebook has already made this tradition (and yearbooks in general) more obsolete than phone booths and pet rocks, which still have some value for some people compared with the alternatives.  Yearbooks, meanwhile, cost somewhere between $60 and $110, while Facebook is free.  In fact, even if you couldn't afford a computer, you could probably get a secondhand laptop for less than the cost of two years' yearbooks.  One, if you found a good deal.  But enough about yearbooks in general.

If someone gives you their yearbook to sign and you just intend to say "HAGS", it would be far easier to just say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I don't really have anything to say."  That may sound rude, but they'll find out that's what you mean anyway when they read their yearbook and see that you just wrote "HAGS".  In fact, I'd have less of a problem if you just signed your name and nothing else, because that's at least not pretending you have anything else to say.  Saying (in essence), "This is my name.  This is how I write my name.  It is in your book," is quite exactly equivalent to "This is my name.  This is how I write my name.  It is in your book.  Have a great summer," but more concise and accurate.

You don't care what kind of summer they have.  At least, not in any real capacity.  You certainly aren't hoping they have a bad summer in most cases.  But does that count?  It counts in the same way as being against child abuse or cancer.  Who on earth is in favor of them?  And if you did care about them enough to actively hope for them to have a great summer, you wouldn't be writing "HAGS" in their yearbook.