Using the Good Stickers

When I was a child, I didn't use the good stickers.
Those heart ones, with the glitter --
yeah --
those stayed in my sticker box.
My sisters didn't use their good stickers either.
Instead, we would hoard them up like little misers until someone suggested we trade.

Trading stickers.  Yes.  The best part of my childhood.

One by one the stickers would be pulled from their boxes and lined up facing the potential buyer.
Two unicorns for the big, shiny heart...
Three little Lisa Franks for that one big Lisa Frank...
(How Lisa broke our hearts with every spotted puppy and rainbow unicorn!)
The trading would get fast and furious, with Bekah (the sweetest of we six) always the wiliest, most heartless trader on the floor.  Somehow she managed to secure all our most coveted stickers while keeping her own.  (Oh, Bekah, you always did get what you wanted.)

But like I said, despite the frenzy of our own little Wall Street, when the floor was closed for the day we didn't use our stickers.  They were our treasures, more rare than black opals.  On special occasions, like when sending a gift to my penpal in Georgia, I would use one of the Good Ones; this always meant you were a dearly loved piece of my life, because with the sticker went at least one-sixteenth of my heart.  So rare was my sticker usage that up until college I had a sticker box with a decade's worth of "the good ones" squirreled away.

My niece isn't like me.  She's an only child, so she doesn't have to share every little piece of everything that comes into her life.

She uses her good stickers as soon as she gets them. (And the 10-year-old inside me dies a little each time she sees the paper peeling off its backing. Don't use the good ones! she screams.)