The History of Scrapbooking (probably)

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So, my wife is kinda into scrapbooking. That said, what is scrapbooking? Well, scrapbooking, or biblioscrapicus, as it was known in ancient Greece, is widespread, no matter what you call it. In fact, archaeologists have uncovered Egyptian hieroglyphs depicting scrapbooking which date back thousands of years to approximately 1962, right around the time Jesus invented the Bowie knife and killed all of those Philistines.

But how did scrapbooking make its way "across the pond," as they say (I have no idea who "they" are), to the United States? Historians have successfully traced American scrapbooking back to one woman: Miss Eustice Hambert. Miss Hambert, history tells us, was an avid sticker book fanatic and won several awards in both the puffy sticker and googly-eyes catagories. She also received an "honorable mention" for her scratch-and-sniff collection.

In addition to her beloved sticker books, Miss Hambert collected glass cats and was known to dress and arrange them, staging elaborate recreations of Civil War battles, such as the Battle of Fort Patches and the Battle of Princess Pootie Pants.

Miss Hambert, sadly, grew rather unstable in her elder years. She began eating a steady diet of raw squirrel and cotton batting, and as a result was known to purchase a new living room set every six months.

Her deteriorating mental health, however, took a tragic turn when she left a local shopping center with what she thought was a Cabbage Patch Doll but which was, in fact, an actual baby. Thankfully, her error was discovered before she had eaten anything vital.

It was while incarcerated in a mental institution that Miss Hambert discovered the soothing balm which would eventually restore her sanity: scrapbooking. A box of old photographs left behind by a previous tenant, a few spools of ribbon, a box of mismatched buttons (which she originally thought was candy), and some wallpaper swatches were the first scraps to make their way into Miss Hambert's book. The staff took notice and, seeing a dramatic change in not only the mental health of Miss Hambert, but of the entire ward, encouraged their charges and donated extra material.

Tragically, the institute ran out of adhesive one day and Miss Hambert and a dozen other inmates started a riot which claimed the lives of nine orderlies and sixteen inmates, among them, Miss Hambert. She was 107 years old.

And thus, from the womb of madness, scrapbooking was born.

Let this be a lesson to husbands the world over: Don't mock your wife's hobbies. They may be the only barrier between you and violent, unprovoked castration.

Thank you,
      Matt Beers