Sticker Panic.

I don't know if you're like me, but...wait. Yes I do, and no you're not.

Let's start again.

When I was a kid, if someone gave me sticker, a decal, anything sticky with a graphic on it, something would come over me. My heart would beat faster, my pupils would dilate, I'd breathe hard and fast. This sounds like sex, doesn't it? Yeah, it's not.

I'd panic. What older people would describe in pecuniary terms when they'd say "...that money is burning a hole in your pocket." Except that sticker was the money.

My eyes would dart around, and...hey, maybe I should write this in the third person? Too late now I guess.

Fuck it.

So my eyes are darting around, and I would sweat a little, and basically become obsessed with finding that sticker a home. Without realising the plastic backing was peeled off and discarded, and I'd be walking around like a zombie praying to the sweet Lord to just give me a sign, where to put this beautiful intoxicating picture of a banana with a smile on its face/tyre dealership logo/erect penis from Brazil.

Maybe Mother Theresa was like that? Except she was obsessed with feeding people and getting them medical attention. And don't tell me she didn't sweat, because I know for a fact she worked in India. Everybody knows it's stupid hot over there, and they don't get to have a winter. How many professional Indian snowboarders do you know? I tell you this- if we all got the fever for doing the right thing by each other, this world would be a better place. But unlike Mother Theresa, the rest of us get off on doing things that are bad/dangerous/fattening.

So anyway, I would get fully worked up over sticker placement, and the second I carefully placed it on the bedhead/back of the chair/tv screen, I would INSTANTLY REGRET IT.

Stickers aren't designed to peel away, any more than bullets are designed to bounce off, or Ford motor vehicles are designed to actually be safe. So I'm screwed, right there. I'd take a step back and think "What just happened?!" Why would a normal kid that likes riding BMX bikes off the first floor balcony, or raiding people's liquor cabinets when they weren't home, and be naked and drunk when they returned, why would a normal kid like that just lose their minds and put a sticker on the tv screen?

Sticker panic. That's why.

Medical fact.

Stickers are designed for one purpose- to stick like an absolute bastard (unless you get your stickers from Asia, in which case good luck to you). As previously noted (pay attention), they are not designed to come off. So once that backing is removed, you absolutely have to stick that sucker on to something, otherwise you mess with destiny, and the stickers whole raisón d'etre HAS BEEN DESTROYED.

You did that. You are the one who is responsible. Not me, baby. I would NEVER DO THAT.

Think about it...

What are guitars for? They're for rocking with, obviously.

So what about those dudes that buy guitars and keep them in their cases like they're made of angel farts, and only take them out with special cotton gloves so their fingers don't tarnish the nitro finish from 1958? They're fuckwits, that's what.

The purpose of a guitar, is to rock. Everybody knows that.

The purpose of a sticker, is to stick. Duh!

So when you get a sticker, it is imperative that you peel off the backing immediately, and run around the house looking for a place to lay it on down. Which reminds me of a story...

My girlfriend is normal in every way, except that she's hotter than anyone on the planet, and farts on me (which I find endearing (but only when SHE does it)).

She also has the ability to instantly teleport herself to any room in the house, because when I'm running around with a fresh sticker, she's there with her arms
crossed saying "Nuh-uh!" like a good Southern baptist woman. Then when I run to the other end of the house, she's already there, looking fine, shaking her head. Just another reason to not trust women. Their menstrual blood attracts bears too, apparently. Seriously, who needs that?

But you know what? I'm not here to talk about stickers or women. I'm here to talk about the backing of stickers.

I know you want to hear something revelatory, like if you rub the backing on your johnson, it will grow twice as large, and smell like a steam train in high summer.

But I would never lie to you.

The truth is, I know a guy called Aideed, who lives in the Middle East. For those of you in America, the Middle East is overseas.

Aideed's middle name is Mohammed, and when he's not praying to Allah and studying the Qu'ran, he is an absolute world class powerhouse maniac for sticker backings.

Yeah, I said it.

Aideed not only saved the backings from a whole lifetime of his stickers, but of all of his friends and families, and even complete strangers. He would go door knocking, and ask people to let him know if they ever got a sticker backing, and to let him have it when they were done with it. He was like a stamp collector on crack, for serious.

So when I met him, he had sixteen apple boxes full of sticker backings. 16 boxes of bad smelling plastic-y shapes with no pictures.

At first I thought he was bonkers, but then I realised it was all due to the fact that different cultures see things in different ways. Aideed was a very spiritual cat, and so for him, it wasn't about the thrill of sticking something on something else, but rather the quiet and meditative appreciation for the things that have come before. In many cases he had never seen the sticker that accompanied the backing sheet. He had no idea what colours and images had lain so close to that plastic for so long. And in the not knowing, lay the vast and limitless ionosphere of potential.

That's the stuff dreams are made of.

One by one, he would take them from a box, and gaze lovingly at them...imagining what banana with a smile on its face/tyre dealership logo/erect penis from Brazil may have at one time spread its banana-ey arms/rubbery tread/jizzy lightning bolt across that space.

Guess what he did for a living?

He was a sticker designer!

(No he wasn't, he was a structural engineer, but in my mind he will always be the other thing).

I'm the most cynical person on the planet, and I'm super quick to judge people. I judged you when I was in the shower this morning. So I like it when the world grabs me by the ear and drags me in front of something different, some facts from another perspective, or throws me into that rarified air of other people's way of doing stuff. I like being wrong, because it shows me there are still things out there I don't know, and that therefore, there may still be hope. Of some kind. Somewhere.

Maybe even just a molecule.

But to my mind, even if there was only one molecule of hope in the whole world, then it would be the most precious thing, and the most valuable thing, and all the better for its scarcity. Like the illusion the diamond cartels have perpetuated all these years.

Who would have thought we could find it on the back of a discarded sticker sheet?

Aideed, that's who.

Rock on... now all I need to do is discover someone who keeps Star Wars boxes but throws away the figurines. That would be some truly zen shit, right there.



This is knifey, from 'the internet'.