Social media…it can be one of the greatest things ever or the worst, depending on how you look at it. For some, the age of over-sharing is embarrassing and uncomfortable, for others, it is a wonderful way to stalk your former high school crushes, but whichever side of the social media fence you fall on, one thing is for sure…it’s here to stay, probably forever (as are all those pictures of you drinking beer on a work/school day).
Which is why I am so thankful that my teenage stupidity is locked away forever, only to live inside the faulty memories of former classmates and the spiral-bound notebooks that circulated throughout Junior and Senior High called Slam Books (that are probably deteriorating in a plastic garbage bag in a dump in Oregon as we speak) which had the potential to destroy the self-esteem of people far more acutely than anything ever put up on Facebook.
I don’t know exactly when these emotional time bombs came into being, but for my generation of teenage girls, all I know is that as soon as it made an appearance, the gloves came off.
You see, the world of Slam Books start off simple enough, you sign in by picking which line number you want:
Answer a few innocent questions to establish your willing participation: Favorite songs, Favorite color, Favorite whatever and then it starts getting a little more, well, personal:
Once you’re at that point, there’s no going back (You used pen for christ sake) and if you don’t move forward everyone will think you’re an asshole which, in 8th/9th/10th/11th/12th grade is unacceptable.
So you continue on, answering questions like: Who’s the biggest slut, Who has the smallest dick, Who will end up pregnant after the Homecoming dance until you reach the last page:
You sign it, feeling emotionally exhausted and wet with anxious perspiration…what have you done?
You pass it to the next person, who then passes it to the next person, who passes it to the next person until this archaic example of social media is filled up and read by EVERY FUCKING PERSON in school, resulting in crying fits, embarrassment and epic fist fights between former friends:
And then, the next Slam Book appears and YOU DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!
So yeah, my generation is lucky that our stupidity was kept between the covers of notebooks and not where our future work colleagues could see that we landed the most votes for BIGGEST HO, but some of us still have the scars from those days and, unlike on Facebook, ours can never be deleted.
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