stickers & Mr.Yuk.

When I was little, I loved stickers. I would hoard them and place all my stickers in a Nike shoebox in the middle of my bookshelf.

I hated how you can only use them once. Meaning that you have to choose carefully where you want it. Meaning you have to find something that's worthy of you gracing its presence with a sticker.

But once in a while, I would go on a huge sticker binge.
I would go around, my Shoebox o' Stickers in hand and I would put them everywhere and anywhere I wanted.

I remember this one time in First Grade, a guest speaker came in to talk to us about the importance of not eating random things. And that day, we all left with 12 "Mr.Yuk" stickers.

The speaker instructed us to put these stickers on anything that wasn't edible.
When I went home, I went ballistic.

Look, there's a wall, I can't eat that. It needs a sticker. That book doesn't taste good. It needs a sticker. That lightbulb is awfully bright. It needs a sticker. And lemme stick five more of these ugly green faces on the perfectly clean white wall while I'm at it.

You know, just in case I wanna eat it.

The Mr.Yuk is still there in our house, underneath the white paint my mom desperately smothered over it so our house value wouldn't go down.