On why you should probably wear your underwear out of the store

“It’s the sticker thing!” Was my exhausted, one eye open breakthrough five hours deep into a heart to heart with myself during the drive home for the holidays.

In preparation for the trip, I’d primed a queue of audiobooks and podcasts long enough to rival a CVS receipt. But instead began chatting to myself out loud in a silent car, and once started, it just kept going the entire way.

There’s something magical about conversations during long car rides. Especially after dark. It’s the closest thing I’ve found to middle school sleepovers. But with less love notes.

I was hoarse when I finally arrived at the house. And the parallels of the dialogue trending a little deeper, and a little closer to home the nearer and nearer I actually got to home, don’t escape me.

About four hours in I was pretty sure I was done monologuing. I’d been hanging out with myself for the last 28 years, what more was there really left to say?

I asked if there were any other rocks I wanted to look under. Hesitating before touching on love, which could take a while.

I tentatively ran through the relationships of the last two years. Most of them brief and insignificant.

There was my quarantine boyfriend who was six foot, dreamy, and probably had a wife and kids.

There was the one who asked me not to write about him. So this sentence is most definitely not about him.

There was the one who drank more than anyone I’ve ever dated. He was always running hours late, and when he finally got there he’d promise me the moon and the stars. I’m still waiting for both celestial bodies.

There was the one who spent weeknights higher than anyone I’ve ever met. He still sends the occasional one word text. As if “Sup?” was all it takes to bring me to my knees.

I’d been trying on men like they were drugstore sunglasses, and I was starting to realise that no one looks all that good in three dollar glasses.

Wading through romances had taken a minute, and I was nearly home by now. Figuring I was already in pretty deep, I asked again if there was anything else worth poking while we were at it.

And that’s when the sticker thing hit.

***

There were few things I loved more than stickers as a kid. Except maybe dolphins. And Tim Youngdale.

I had piles and piles of stickers. They were the most beautiful things in the world. Obviously far too special to actually use, so they’ve spent the last twenty-odd years in my sticker container.

Next to the soap making kit that was also way too wonderful to ever touch. And all the nice notebooks that my thoughts weren’t nearly good enough for. And the fancy stationery I’m still waiting for the right occasion to write on.

Sometimes if there’s a completely gorgeous sunrise, I feel like telling the universe that it’s just a Tuesday. It should probably save that shit, at least for MLK Day or something.

If how we do one thing is how we do everything, I could see the too-special-to-use stickers trickling down into all aspects of my life.

And well it was all very kind and thoughtful of eight-year-old me to save those stickers for twenty-eight-year-old me. I can’t help but think I would have had a hell of a lot more fun with them before puberty hit.

Eight-year-old me didn’t know there’d be things in life I’d one day think were better than stickers. Like sex. And alcohol. And finding out that the lump on my head is actually just a cyst and not a tumor.

***

It was basically the same as any other family get together, except that my cousin and I sat at the bottom of the porch stairs, masked and six feet apart, while everyone else scattered themselves among the steps distancing from us.

The rest of the family was all in a bubble together. A bubble that we weren’t in. But my cousin and I also weren’t in each other’s bubbles either.

My mom asked me if it was weird making us sit so far apart from everyone and from each other, and I told her we’d crossed weird a long time ago.

Grandma wanted to know if we were wearing our masks in public, and if we’d found husbands yet.

My cousin recounted her Covid date where she quarantined on a boat with a guy who was also positive. And I reassured grandma by telling her I’d gotten hit on during my latest Covid test by the dude who was confirming my date of birth on the test tube.

There might just be hope for her granddaughters after all.

While we chatted, I made a card for my niece’s birthday, using stickers that were old enough to vote. My mom asked with surprise where I’d gotten them from.

I told her I was pretty sure she’d given them to me at my treehouse birthday party. She said she hoped my niece knew how special that birthday card was.

I took a long drag of herbal tea, and announced to the family that apparently this very moment was what I’d been waiting for all those years.

“My new clothes all take months to ripen,” grandma began to regale. She added that there’s a couple pairs of really special items that will take years before they’re ready to be worn.

She then moved on to family lore of how my mom used to wear her underwear out of the store when she was a kid. “Over her pants of course,” grandma narrated. Shoes, shirts, anything new, she would be so excited that she would wear them right out of the store.

***

When I was a kid it seemed like my stickers were so wonderful that there was never a time worthy of their use, no special occasion special enough.

It made me wonder what I was currently holding on to, because I’d pegged this present moment as not enough.

And the answer was a lot of things, beyond just the physical items I was saving for some nebulous future date, there were intangible ones as well.

Conversations and moments I’d wanted to sink into, but that hadn’t seemed like quite enough, like maybe if I saved some for the future, somewhere down the line the dialogue would be a little deeper, a little sweeter.

I wondered if maybe it stems from a fear that this is it. That if I use those stickers, I’m somehow conceding that this is as good as it gets for things over in stickerville. Even though as good as it gets is pretty damn good.

There’s something intimidating about allowing a moment to be enough.

It got me thinking how in a way saving my stickers was kind of a bitch slap to abundance.

Sunrises aren’t in short supply. And reveling in all the provision that we have right now, is a form of gratitude, and trust that we’ll be provided for again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

Trust that something bigger is looking out. Trust that abundance is a deep, deep well.

So here’s to using the damn stickers, and wearing your underwear out of the store.

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