Slam Books

Originally published on: 17/03/2011

When we were in high school, we had those books we’d hand out to the classmates to fill in towards the end of the year. Not the yearbooks, but the ones which gave you hardly enough space to squeeze in what you wanted to write. They served mainly as a status symbol for the owner to flaunt and compare with other slam books – “Look, mine is so big and colourful”, “More people have written in my book than in yours” and that type of pointless gushing. A plain notebook just wasn’t nearly as cool.

It wasn’t even like you got to write about anything you wanted because the book told you what to put in, which was mostly useless stuff like Favourite Flower, Favourite Colour, etc. Some even asked you for things like Most Embarrassing Moment or Deepest Darkest Secret.

I was fine with all of it because at that age, I used to love writing in slam books and would always fill them in with the utmost care. However, there was that one dreaded question which would invariably appear everywhere: different variations of Your Thoughts On Me, which, if I remember right, I would mostly answer by talking about how there wasn’t enough space provided to write about how awesome that person was. Then I would say something like “Have a wonderful life ahead” and draw hearts and put a huge signature to fill up the empty space.

Now I think of those books, and while I like how some of them are so bright and colourful, most of the time I wonder why people don’t just get themselves a pretty notebook without those annoying pointers. It gives you freedom and isn’t really hard to fill in once you begin. I wrote in a blank book today, and it felt good!

I’ll never grow out of the hearts-and-signature ending, though.