Use the stickers

When I was a kid, I loved stickers. I think most kids probably did, so that wasn’t unusual. But while I had an impressive sticker collection, I never actually used them. One time, my aunt gave me an envelope full of stickers she’d saved. They were some of the cutest and prettiest stickers I’d ever seen, and I loved them. I loved them so much, I didn’t see how I could use them, because a sticker used is a sticker that eventually gets thrown away. Or peeled off the furniture you weren’t supposed to put it on to begin with.

So I saved them. I became a sticker hoarder. I saved every nice sticker I ever got, except for a sheet of Digimon stickers I got for myself and paradoxically put on my binder of Pokémon cards. They’re still on there, by the way. Those, at least, survived the test of time.

But the nice stickers? The nice stickers always went into the envelope my aunt gave me. I saved them from the time I was maybe seven years old, always adding to the collection, sometimes pulling them out to look at them, but always deciding they were too nice to use just yet.

When it came time to move to this house, our big, beautiful work-in-progress, I saw the sticker envelope while I was packing up my craft supplies. I’d always known where it was; I’d added a few more stickers over the years. Stickers aren’t a frequent part of your life as an adult, but I still got a few, and into the collection they went. I pulled them out to have a look. The stickers from my aunt were still in the bottom of the envelope, and when I pulled one out, it made the most dreadful crackling sound and disintegrated in my hand.

One of my prettiest stickers, a treasure I never enjoyed, because I was convinced it was too nice–like the good pen on the desk, and the prettiest journal on the shelf. And it was a hard realization, because someday, the same thing will happen to those. I’ll pick up the nice pen and the ink will have dried. I’ll look at the journal and the polyurethane cover will be flaking and peeling.

So go ahead. Nice isn’t for later. Nice is for right now, for the little moments where a sticker on a notebook that will be thrown away at the end of the summer brings more happiness than a sticker tucked in a folder that falls apart after saving it for twenty-five years.

Use the stickers.