Tuesday, September 14

Wishing stickers

Several years ago I had an idea: All the nifty stickers that come on fruits and vegetables are usually thrown away with the peelings; why not save them and make some art in the process? Thus started the collection on the end walls of our kitchen cabinets, where the colorful little stickers were stuck. To justify this nonsense, we invented the idea that once we got the entire surface covered, we can move down the road and build a new house! That was an exciting idea, but a bit difficult to make happen the way we wanted. These little stickers are made for only one purpose, and that is to identify the fruit they’re stuck on to enable a grocery clerk to check you out quickly at the check stand. The adhesive only has to last a few days or weeks before its purpose is fulfilled and the sticker can fall off if it wants.

Kitchens get humid, then dry, repeatedly. This takes a toll on little stickers’ adhesive. Some of them have better adhesive and have hung on for near decades; others have given up and gone down the drain with the dishwater. Onion stickers are impossible to remove with their adhesive exposed, and stickers on peaches won’t re-stick. Many stickers are unusable to us as a result.

New patches of wood are exposed as they fall off, making our wish to cover the entire surface seem unachievable. Does this mean we don’t get a new house? Or should we save up some money instead of pasting stickers on a cabinet and hoping for a miracle?

3 comments:

Susan Hurley-Luke said...

I remember you doing this at my house too :) I'm sorry to say we didn't keep up the tradition.

Wait - I'm just wondering. We have had several new houses since we saw you last.

What does this mean??

Tom Hurley said...

I guess that means—IT WORKS!!

Susan Hurley-Luke said...

You say it works even though we stopped collecting fruit and vegetable stickers? Wow! It may be a more powerful practice in the southern hemisphere then since you were only here a few weeks.

Now if you could just bottle that factor and take it with you to the northern hemisphere, you would have a new house in no time at all.