Welcome to another post in the seemingly endless Wednesday book feature, called the Humpback Writers for Hump Day. I usually have a disclaimer that the authors don't actually have hunchbacks, but this time I really don't know. Why? Because today, in honor of Back to Skool season, we feature the most fabulous and wonderful writer of them all -- YOU!
Yes, friends, this week we feature the humble marble-covered composition notebook, this one by iScholar, which is a kind of high-tech name for an outfit that makes such a low-tech classic. I don't know if there's a kid in America, or perhaps the world, who hasn't had some variation on these at some time. I think I used them until middle school, when we had to switch to loose-leaf binders.
If it seems like this style of notebook has been around forever, well, not really, but it has been around longer than anyone alive. Format.com has an article about a writer working on a history of the humble learning companion. Designer Aron Fay says the origin of the marble composition book is shrouded in history, but it goes back to France and Germany in the mid-19th century, when marbling became inexpensive.
Inexpensive is the word -- I got this one for fifty cents during the big school supply sale at the supermarket. I don't generally write out things of any length longhand -- those awe-inspiring novels you see to the right were all drafted on a computer from the get-go -- but I like to have blank paper for notes, memoranda, ideas, shopping lists, to-do lists, sketches, and whatnot. As a bonus, this book, like so many others, has on its inside covers "a class schedule, contact list, multiplication table and conversion tables." It has every table but a cafeteria table. How can you go wrong?
The main draw of a composition book, though, is its very blankness. For Child Fred it was not just for notes (class and passed), but also was a doodle magnet.
A blank book may seem like a lot of nuttin', but it's an invitation to creation.
And now I sound like an overly cheerful second-grade teacher. So I think I'll leave it there for this week.
5 comments:
Back in high school, kids (girls) used these to make "slam books", sort of a pre-Internet era version of Facebook ... a place to post anonymous hurtful things about people. Each target had his or her own page. To be fair, some of the posts on various boys were moony and not hurtful, but mostly it was mean girl stuff.
I had been put ahead in school (big mistake, in hindsight) so I was 12 years old during first few weeks of 10th grade, this stuff went right over my head, fortunately.
A few years ago, I found one of those composition books from college. At the time of writing I thought my prose timeless and profound. Sorry to report how wrong I'd been. Alone in the basement, I flushed from embarrassment while struggling through the vapid tripe. It was nearly as bad as reading one of today's major newspapers.
OTOH, the drawings made during boring classes were pretty good.
PLW, I was put ahead in 7th grade. A big mistake for sure. Despised as an intruder by the new group, loathed as a deserter by the old group.
Apparently composition books can lead to an awful lot of misery.
I'm just hoping that every copy of the college newspaper that featured my work has gone to the great recycling bin in the sky, just in case I get famous....
Yet another thing that binds many Bleatniks (& Fredsters) together...I, too, was skipped a grade, grabbed from mid-year of second grade & plopped into third. As Mongo said, I became persona non grata among my 2nd grade friends AND my new 3rd grade classmates. Still, in the end, it was worth it.
Seeing that classic, fresh, clean notebook reminds me of my yearly September oath to not decorate, scribble, or deface my new notebooks, book covers, etc. That usually went out the window by, oh, October or so. ;>
I'm long past my school years, but the sight of these notebooks in the stores, along with bazillions of pens and pencils, reassures me that normality will resume, if not this month then soon.
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