A treasure trove of memories has been flooding into Facebook of late.

Copies of old yearbooks, captured via cellphone and uploaded one page at a time by volunteers.

Most of the pages predate me—some running back as far as the 1930s—and yet, I can't look away. I've lost hours to paging through the images, looking for clues to the history of my town, of my own family.

There are my old teachers as brand new educators, many still walking around with their maiden names, fresh out of college and ready to turn their love of a subject loose on fresh and impressionable minds.

There are relatives long gone with bits of their personalities unearthed like a time capsule buried in the past. The great-aunt who was editor of her school newspaper. The grandfather whose military service was listed in his alma mater's yearbook.

Yearbooks seem almost burdensome when you've been out of school for a few years. What are you going to do with this pile of dust collectors as you move from apartment to apartment?

It's rare that a 20-something pulls one out to peruse the “never change” and “see ya after the summer” messages.

It's only later that we realize the yearbooks weren't for us at all.

They were for our kids.

For our grandkids.

For the generations who want to chuckle at our awful hair and unearth unheard of stories about our past lives.