Checking for Stickers

Whilst eating lunch the other day, a dish I call ‘Hobo Stir Fry,’ I felt something odd in my mouth, like when you find a bone in your cereal. After checking to make sure my fork had all the tines, I got the offending chunk of something onto my tongue and picked it off.

It turned out to be half of a sticker, the kind with a number that they put on vegetables in the grocery store. At least, I assume they put them on at the grocery store. They could be a natural evolution and the plants just grow with them on. Nature is sneaky like that.

Anyway, I found half of a sticker, specifically for a green pepper. Now, some of you may be aghast to learn that I’ve voluntarily eaten a vegetable, but it does happen. I don’t like it, the vegetables don’t like it, but my doctor says that if I don’t eat them with some regularity, I’ll end up, medically speaking, ‘not alive.’ 

So, like I said, I found half a sticker (for those of you curious, no, I never did find the other half). This suggested several things: one, knowing me, this may be a pattern. And two, I have no idea how many of these I’ve actually eaten.

Considering I’ve been making my lunches for a couple years now and have been making basically the same thing (the aforementioned Hobo Stir Fry) all that time, and Hobo Stir Fry uses two green peppers, an onion, carrots, and mushrooms, which is at least three stickers. Now, obviously, if I were to see a sticker whilst chopping up the veggies, I would remove it. However, I don’t ever really recall noticing one. 

To sum up: I have been, potentially, eating like three stickers a week for the last several years.

Comments on my intelligence aside, because of this, I fully expect to have sticker-related superpowers within the next couple of months. Honestly, I’m a little excited.

I’m not sure what kind of powers stickers would grant. I could have a general ‘adhesion’ motif where I could stick bad guys to walls and floors and each other, kind of like Spiderman. Or maybe I could shoot stickers at people. I could be Stickerman. Or Adhesor. Or That Guy With the Stickers.

Honestly, with my luck – remember, this all started because I may be eating stickers on a regular basis – my superpower will consist of sweating adhesives and then, when I exercise, I’ll just end up gluing my arms to my sides and my shorts to my . . . er . . . bits.

Maybe I should start checking for stickers before I actually make my lunches.

Cheers,

-Jason