Stickers

Daniela Cesario

If I had to estimate, I would say I had over 200 stickers collected up until I was eight years old. They were stored in the drawer of a small corner table in my childhood bedroom. I had all kinds of stickers: ones with googly eyes, glitter ones, and even ones that were scratch and sniff. My stickers taught me how to appreciate creativity in the small things. I loved how unique they all were. I had opportunities to decorate an art project or put them on birthday cards, but I simply could not part with any. Each sticker held a dear spot in my heart, and using one was like tearing out a piece of me. Consequently, I made the ultimate decision not to utilize them. My sticker table sat, collecting nothing but dust and new stickers for the first eight years of my life. Whenever I would acquire a new one, the only thing I could think about was running home and placing it in the drawer amongst the others. I had imagined they all conspired with each other on how to escape and had their own personalities.   

My stickers watched me grow out of my racecar bed, they saw my brother and I eventually stop sharing a room, they even presumably observed me read my favorite childhood picture book for the last time. However, the year I turned nine, was the year I hardly thought about my prized sticker collection. My parents had decided to get a divorce, and my stickers were forcibly pushed to the back of my mind. They were moved from different houses a total of 4 times. I no longer cherished them as I once had. My stickers watched my three older siblings eventually stop coming back to visit my father’s home. They witnessed my realization that I was going to be alone for the last two years of my adolescence, in the house they were permanently stuck in. They saw me every night praying to be a better runner, a better student, and a better friend. They saw me at my worst, and seldom at my best. Although they were simply inanimate objects, my stickers attended every crucial moment of my childhood that no human eye could interpret the relevance of.

It is unbelievable to me how something I thought so valuable would then change to having slight worth within the span of a couple weeks. It is funny how fast time goes when you are young, and how the things that held so much importance in our little minds become nothing but nostalgia. I look back now and wish I would have used up those stickers, wish I would have shared them with the people in my life that I can no longer remember the names of. Wish they still held the significance to me that they once did. Before you know it, the things you deemed once top priority will fall to a trivial worth, right before your own eyes. So let this be a lesson to not be afraid to use your stickers. Put them on every surface you judge notable, on car windshields and skateboards. Scrapbooks and art projects. Write a love letter and seal it with a sticker. Do not let the fear of running out of something stop you from using it for its true purpose. After all, it is the little things that help shape who we are and remind us of where we came from. 

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Meet Daniela Cesario! She is with the class of 2024 at Utica High School in Utica, MI. She loves being very involved in school, as well as sports and extracurricular activities. She runs cross country and track while being National Honor Society vice president and a senior mentor for the sophomore-senior program (SSP).