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Shot Books: A Documentation Of Legality

Shot Book

It’s the day every sorority girl counts down to, the day you can join your friends in the promised land, the day you stop living in fear and enter a new era of confidence. Of course, I’m referring to the 21st anniversary of your birth! And what would any birthday be without a party and presents from your main bitches? I present to you, my favorite legality tradition: the shot book.

I’ve been told that shot books are mostly a mid-western thing, as apparently girls in the south get giant checklists to wear around all night, with 21 different fun things to do, like kiss a bartender, dance on a table, steal a street sign, etc. I’ve also heard that many girls receive paddles on their 21st birthdays. These are all super cute and crafty ideas, but the 21st birthday gift that requires the most collaborative crafting is the shot book, hands down.

The way these work, is 21 of the birthday girl’s best friends work together to create different pages of the “book.” Each page should be crafted by a different girl, with pictures, and glitter, and so forth. You include on each page blank spaces to eventually fill in the following information about a shot to be taken on the night of the girl’s 21st birthday:

-The name of the shot
-Where the shot is taken
-Who purchased the shot
-What time the shot was taken
-Room for the birthday girl’s signature at the bottom

Since it’s a super top-secret birthday present that the girl obviously knows she’s getting, the one or two people who are commissioned to organize the book typically create a Facebook group to assign page numbers to each of the birthday girl’s friends, and eventually put the book together. The best friends are usually the first pages of the book (i.e. the shots she’ll remember), going down to the casual friends in the late teens and twenties.

Once page numbers are assigned, it’s time to purchase the actual book. Most girls opt for the traditional scrapbook, and then decorate it according to the style of the birthday girl, or in some cases, her personal requests. Most include some form of glitter or Ryan Gosling collage, but there are exceptions. The occasional strange request is always honored, because after all, its her birthday!

Now comes the difficult and stressful part: waiting for pages to slowly be turned in to the shot book commisioner at an aforementioned secret location. Without fail there are always those few bitches who procrastinate until the bitter end. You’ll find yourself sending text after text: “Hey, just wondering if you’re still making a page for Sarah? I know she would really appreciate it!” that eventually turn into something a little nastier like “LISTEN HERE, I need to finish this book and you are holding everybody up” and finally become little more than frantic and barely make sense: “GLITTER SHOT BOOK PAGE. GIVE IT TO ME NOW. DEF TOTES MURDER. *insert angry emoji face*”

Once you receive all of the pages, they will all be individualized. They’ll include pictures of the girl who made it with the birthday girl, and perhaps a fun, relevant theme to their relationship. I like to include special instructions like “get the phone number of the cutest bartender and put it here!” When all of the pages have been turned in to the shot book commissioner, its time to put everything together and present it to the birthday girl. She’ll then take it out with her the next 2, 3, or 10 times she goes out, as long as it takes to finish that book!

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rockchalksrathawk

ADPi 3x Legacy Alum Living in Sydney, Australia

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