PUFFY STICKER DECISIONS

Chenise Sinclair photographed by Celeste Shiels

In grade one I was five years old and my Mum worked full time; so after school was over it was my Dad who would be the one to collect me from school. We had the same routine every afternoon. After class would end for the day my classmates and I would get a sticker to take home. 

Each day it was something new. One day a star, another a love heart, some were animals too. As some of my friends would put them on their water bottles or their school books or even their desks, I’d save mine. 

I would hold it tightly in my sweaty little hands, leave class and meet my Dad across the road from my school where he would be waiting for me standing beside his old school blue jeep wrangler. 

Once we got inside his car he would sit me on his lap and let me put my sticker anywhere I wanted on the horn of his steering wheel. There was a huge collection of them on there and some were fading away and they were all mismatched but I looked forward to getting to put my sticker on his steering wheel every afternoon. 

Now looking back as a parent myself, I can only imagine the joy he felt seeing all of those stickers throughout the day when I wasn’t with him in the car. I can’t remember the last time I got in after school and placed my last sticker there. 

I wonder what it was…

As I grew up and got more stickers randomly throughout my life I could never decide where to stick them. The decision to do so was too large and too permanent for me. The commitment versus the regret ratio didn’t seem worth the risk to me so I’d never use them. I’d store them away or only rotate them out of clear phone cases without ever actually using them. 

I never got to enjoy stickers like I did in grade one with my Dad. 

That was until my daughter turned two. 

For her first Christmas she was given a small car-thing with four wheels with a clear dome and red handles. I don’t know what it’s really called.
She also got given some stickers for the first time, but it was me who was nervous. 

I thought, “Oh god, she’s about to learn that once you put a sticker on that’s it! You can pull it off but it might rip, it might leave a residue, and it won’t be sticky enough again to put somewhere else!” 

I was terrified about her inevitably becoming upset that you gotta make a decision and see it through. 

And I was right, the first few times she did get upset. But I chose to guide her into a mindset that wasn’t like mine once was. I explained to her that once you put a sticker down, that’s where it will stay the best. We experimented. 

We pulled them off, some of them ripped, some of them lost their glue and others wouldn’t even budge. But these were the lessons to be learned. 

I would show her the rest of the sticker sheet, full of candy canes and reindeers and say, “See, we have lots more to put somewhere else. It’s okay and I think these ones look good here.” and we would move onto the next. She was no longer upset about the fatalities of the first few stickers and I made sure to not make the decision so large and scary as I once thought myself. 

I eventually bought her a blank notebook and ordered a bunch of puffy stickers off amazon. (They’re easier for them to peel off on their own than the flat ones at this age too.) 

Puffy stickers were the most popular ones when I was growing up too. It was like stickers had come full circle in my life and this time I was my Dad. 

Now almost daily we open a new page in her notebook, pick a sheet of puffy stickers and get to stickin’. And I’m proud to say I no longer feel the stress of deciding where to put them and I can tell she doesn’t either. In fact, I have a pink bus sticker on the back of my phone case that she put there and it’s way better than any phone case could ever be. I see a dinosaur sticker on her toy shelf and sometimes at the end of the day I’ll check the bottom of my sock and see a glittery flower sticker that’s found its way onto me. 

The point is; there’s always going to be more opportunities. 

There’s no ‘perfect time’ or ‘perfect place.’ 

It is what you make it with what you’ve currently got at the time. 

There’s always more stickers.

And there’s always more places to put them. 

All my love,
Chenise Sinclaire.