Stickers, 1980

When I was a kid we collected stickers. We traded them on the back stoop. Some of them smelled like watermelon, some of them like bananas or pineapple. I had smurf stickers, too. I loved those smurf stickers almost as much as the Quebec Nordiques patch on the back pocket of my rugby pants, or my Z 2000 sneakers that made me run at the speed of light. You could say I was a sissy with my stickers, which I kept in a big pale blue album, but then I would have kicked your ass. When I was sick in the hospital my mother gave me a stuffed blue smurf and I slept with him in the crook of my arm like an old pal.