A bit of a sticky wicket

I just would like to shake the hand of the person who invented the adhesive on those peel and press stickers.

I have seldom gone into hand to hand combat so ill prepared.

While shopping for a couple of items late tonight that we ran out of unexpectedly (read this as "it NEVER made it to the shopping list", I swear!), I found some really cute animal and circus stickers in the "el cheapo" section of the stationery department of the local dollar store.

I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth when the price was so low and I use them to brighten up (or tacky up) letters I send to family and friends, so I brought the little devils home.

Little did I realize the battle of wills that was about to ensue.

Carefully, I began to peel away the surrounding sticky foil so that I could more easily remove the cute little animals and shapes to adorn the scribblings of this particular mad woman.

Demon rum and the prohibitionists wouldn't have posed so great a problem!!

The foil seductively peeled away from the backing sheet and the first couple of animals then, just when I was lulled into a COMPLETELY false sense of security, the nasty *&!$^%*# foil turned into a horror show of sticky, non-removeable Chinese fingertrapping mess.

I believe I have lost a couple of layers of skin trying to peel it off.

The animals on the sticker sheet don't look quite so cute right now. I put them in the bottom drawer and shut the light out on their happy little wicked faces. I think I can hear them laughing in the darkness.

THEY KNEW!!! They knew that the trimming foils were really sabotage.

That's why they were smiling so sweetly. They KNEW that some hapless fool (ME!) would think about how precious they would look on the next letter to Germany and buy them only to fall under the seductive and hypnotic spell.

The rats that constructed them used glue not unlike that on the traps that catch their namesakes in a deathly stillness that prevents all movement.

At last, I feel sorry for them writhing helplessly only to discover every movement makes the matter that much worse. I have lived through the nightmare only to come out battle scarred on the other side.

In a few days, the stickers will look cute again and I will use them. But somehow, I will have my revenge on them.

Ha! I know what I will do to them - I will put them on all of the checks we have to write to pay bills and send them to the heartless and unfeeling bill collectors who are interested only in their pound of flesh and not how precious the envelope looks with the prancing little rodeo horse or the sweet little circus giraffe.

Let's see how happy the stickers are when some 400 pound receiving clerk named Enid rubber stamps them and forever mars their happy smile with purple indelible ink.

I'll bet they won't be laughing then.

Of course, when I check into Bryces or some other qualified facility to deal with the mentally ill like myself, all they will have to do to ensure those government checks for my care keep flowing in is to ask me to remove the trimming foils from packets of stickers. Then the staff can all sit around smiling their OWN knowing smiles. "She'll be busy for hours trying to pick that stuff off of her fingers!"

It's only a matter of time before they join me. They just don't know it - yet.