this sparks joy

a few weeks back, I subscribed to the Mrs. Grossman's Sticker Club. Partly because I have a niece now, and partly because I send out more cards than I once did, and partly because....stickers....

But mainly because I don't like getting only un-fun mail.

I kind of forgot I had subscribed, but they came today:



Mainly, it was because I was just happy to find out Mrs. Grossman's still exists. In fact, there really IS a Mrs. Grossman..

(Yes, the factory is still open; last year they stopped doing tours. But they still exist).

It makes me happy that they are still around. They are one good thing from my late childhood that still exists, even if a lot of things I used to love and take joy from are long gone.

Heh. I think of the line from "Breakfast at Tiffany's," where they are in Tiffany's trying to get a Cracker Jack prize engraved, and the salesman asks Paul if they really still put prizes in Cracker Jacks, and when Paul says yes, he responds, "That's nice to know... It gives one a feeling of solidarity, almost of continuity with the past, that sort of thing."

Yes. Very much that.

Sticker-collecting was a HUGE thing among girls when I was in fifth and sixth grade, and those of us who weren't quite ready to move onto more grown-up things still did so into seventh and even eighth grade. I remember my friend Lisa E. and me getting together regularly to trade stickers and also look at each other's collections. Some of the stickers were the standard packaged kind - where you got a couple dozen in a pack, so trading was EASY and you weren't having to give up the only one of one you really liked to trade. In other cases, the ones you had were one-offs, and you had to think really hard if you wanted to trade it.

Mrs. Grossman's stickers were the best kind - I can picture how they were sold, there were big huge rolls of them, and a big clear Plexiglas stand that held the rolls, and you either cut or tore off as many of whatever design you wanted, and they were priced based on size and complexity. I remember them ranging from either a dime or quarter up to maybe fifty cents for the really big sheets (some of the sheets had multiple stickers on them. Small enough cost for a child with little pocket money, and there was just something so....nice....about stickers.

No, we rarely stuck them on anything, though I think now as an adult I could see making something like a decoupage tray and then coating it with some kind of fixative to keep the stickers nice. (I might do that with some of my favorites from the packs I get).

The one place I remember selling them in the town where I grew up was a gift/toy shop called The Land of Make Believe (which closed in the last couple years, I saw it online, and that makes me sad).

But in a weird way, when I see those tiny little hearts, or the teddy bear stickers, or the photorealistic bunnies (probably my favorite of the set), I can recapture a little bit of that feeling of being 11 and having my allowance in my pocket and being downtown and able to go to the Land of Make Believe and buy some stickers....

(Maybe I get an album to house my favorite ones, just like I had when I was 11.)