Yeah, notes folded like that and other crazy ways were very popular when I was in junior high in the early 80s. I had them passed to me (and I'd also pass them) in the hallways and during class. Of course, the passing and reading of them had to be a secret.

specklet did you just read my question, think of the notefold, whip out your camera, take pictures, upload and post this question?

awesum.

I could never master the fancy folded note and was always in awe of those who could. You rule!

My best friend in jr. high and I had our "Note Book" which was a spiralbound book that we wrote notes to each other in and handed back and forth as obviously as possible because that drew less attention than trying to be all sneaky and whatnot.

Eventually it stopped being traditional notes and transitioned into a kind of graphic novel starring stick figures. I wonder whatever happened to it. It was hilarious.

Never did that one (it's cool!) but there was a tradition in a Quaker school of my acquaintance to fold them like this. They were called "KOBs" for 'kindness of bearer', and apparently the tradition went back a fair piece. I can't remember how to fold it - it was a self-sealing triangle shape, not unlike a paper football.

Yep, junior high in the '80s.

sushi: yes! Hee! I was glad to discover that even though I haven't folded one in years, I was able to do it the first time.

jrossi, it's too bad you don't have it! My closest friend still has a couple notes that we saved from that era: freakin' hilarious. We were so creative and... strange!

In general, the prolific notes written in high school amaze me. Somehow I was able to attend class and pass tests, and at the same time write pages upon pages of urgently important information to several close friends daily -- friends whom I expected to see at lunch or right after school anyway. The teenage need for peer-to-peer communication is never satisfied.

On reflection, it's not that different from hanging out off and on during the workday, either.

That was the standard note-folding MO for my middle school.

When I was kid, we where too poor to fold paper.

"Note Book" which was a spiralbound book that we wrote notes to each other in

We had these too, jrossi, but for the whole of year 8. I think there ended up being three notebooks in total, over four or five months, before we got busted. I've still got one. It got absolutely disgusting, with awfully crude, juvenile limericks and drawings, but there are some very nice love notes and essays about a classmate who commited suicide, another who ran away for a while, another who was hospitalised for anorexia etc. It will make a very interesting historical artifact in another 30 or so years.

My friend, who was an origami genius, knew how to fold up notepaper so that if I pushed just so, it bloomed into a little paper balloon. She would write a note inside one end and I'd have to look through a hole in the other end to read it. It was endlessly fascinating.

We folded them like this, like the paper footballs, and in various other ways. And we also had a notebook -- my best friend in seventh grade and I had one in which we wrote all sorts of things about who we crushed on and what teachers we hated.

Unfortunately, I was the ditz who left the book in the little storage bin under my desk in English class. I passionately hated my English teacher, at least until she became my mentor in the school's drama club and started driving me home every day after rehearsal. And I had written quite extensively about how much I detested her. She found the notebook, confiscated it, and I assume that she read the whole thing.

Because in my notebook I had written about my abiding love for a boy in my English class. She changed my seat so that I had to sit behind him every day, and she would call us up to the chalkboard at the same time. I thought she was trying to humiliate me, but looking back ... maybe she was trying to put us in proximity to one another so we'd have a chance of hooking up. Alas, it never happened.

I think he's out of the closet now, along with a bunch of my other junior and high school crushes, including Lance Bass, the first boy who ever complimented me. Sigh.

Maybe that's why we're all so attracted to MeCha. It's one giant ongoing notebook with hundreds of contributors.

When I was kid, we where too poor to fold paper.

You had PAPER??

Maybe that's why we're all so attracted to MeCha. It's one giant ongoing notebook with hundreds of contributors.

How astute, jrossi!

Now, who is going to circulate the crush pages?

Er, eponysterical.

I think he's out of the closet now, along with a bunch of my other junior and high school crushes, including Lance Bass, the first boy who ever complimented me. Sigh.

Oh my GOD, what is UP with that? Seriously, I went home a few years ago and ended up spending an afternoon with a guy I had only known casually in high school. Apparantly, every.single.guy I liked in high school was in the closet. Facebook confirmed it - there was like, some secret underground "We're all gay and attractive to Muddgirl" club or something.

Specklet: is that a picture of your resignation letter? Cuz it'd be pretty awesome if you delivered it like that.

I kept all my little folded notes. There's about three shoeboxes worth of them. We folded them into little locked squares similar to origami throwing stars.

mullacc, I totally should have! Dang, too late.

Ambrosia, you're lucky. I REALLY wish me and my friend had saved more than we did.

muddgirl, that is exactly the way it was for me, too.

my senior year i fell madly passionately in love with this guy. he went to another school -- in another state, no less -- but we saw each other quite often because we were in the same organization. we talked on the phone all the time, i visited him and stayed at his house, we hung out in hotels, holding hands, me sitting on his lap, the works. i invited him to my prom, but he couldn't attend because of finals.

the next year, i was home for his prom, and he invited me, and he was the perfect gentleman the whole time. opened doors for me, took me out for lovely meals, bought me beautiful flowers, the works.

but nothing ever happened, right? and then when we connected a few years later he told me he was gay. and then when we re-connected a few years after that, he couldn't remember if he'd come out to me, so he told me he was gay.

this year we re-connected again, and he told me he was gay.

it's like slapping me in the face repeatedly. "YOU LIKED ME IN HIGH SCHOOL, BUT I WAS GAY AND I STILL AM AND JUST IN CASE YOU'RE STILL INTERESTED, I'M STILL GAY."

lance bass, however, was my very first gay crush. and this is how i know that i am mainly attracted to gay men. still. even now! except for the boyfriend, who isn't gay. i don't think. i mean, i hope not.

brina my highschool crush career reads like yours. The only guy I even particularly cared about that I went "steady" with for three of the four years I was in high school, we did with the understanding going in that I was his beard.

sigh. I blame it all on being insanely, irrationally attracted to small, slender, smooth, soft-spoken blonds with an affinity for art, theatre, literature, cooking, music and the humanities. it's providentially lucky that I managed to hook up with the only single straight guy who fits that description in the entire state of Colorado.

the only rationale I've thought of to justify this is that I am, in fact, just a big ol' hairy bear trapped in a straight girl's body.

mudgirl, here's your balloon.

I'm so jealous. We just folded ours in boring squares.

My friend, who was an origami genius, knew how to fold up notepaper so that if I pushed just so, it bloomed into a little paper balloon. She would write a note inside one end and I'd have to look through a hole in the other end to read it. It was endlessly fascinating.

Now I'm *really* jealous.

lfr: hear hear! pretty boys ftw.

I saved the bulk of my notes from junior high and high school - the loose ones and the notebooks too. The notebooks are at my apartment and I've been through them a couple of times within the past few years. The loose notes are in a box in storage. I miss them. I also met my first long-time (5 years) boyfriend because of a crazy note I wrote to a friend of mine, but that's another story.

My friends and I totally folded our notes like that in junior high and high school. I also did the note spiral thing with a few friends - at one time I had three separate spirals going with three different friends. We used to decorate the covers of the spirals with words and pictures cut out from magazines - they were rather artistic.

I still have some of the spirals and a bunch of the loose notes.