Alan Dee: Picking away at the scab of my sticker sensibility

Last week, regular readers – and presumably the Pentagon – will be aware, I went on at some length about the irritation I was being forced to endure by a cash dispenser which only gave me a split second to grab my receipt before retracting it into the bowls of the machine in a bid to avoid littering.
Opinion - Alan DeeOpinion - Alan Dee
Opinion - Alan Dee

You may consider, and I wouldn’t argue with you, that if such a petty peeve is the limit of my railing against the world, I’ve got it very sweet.

Indeed Mrs Dee, who is accustomed to my Meldrew moments, said as much but unwisely added: “Still, at least you appear to be over that sticker thing now.”

Oh, woman, you really know how to wound. No, I haven’t got over the sticker thing. I have learned to live with the sticker thing, one day at a time. And I’m coping pretty well, thank you very much, until someone carelessly scrapes at the scab. Cheers.

So what’s the sticker thing, you may ask? It’s very simple. I don’t like stickers that have been stuck on stuff. That doesn’t make me a bad person, does it?

It started innocently enough, as far as I can recall. It started with fruit. Apples, bananas, oranges – all these items in my youth were liable to come with a little provenance sticker.

I obviously removed the ones on the apples, because I wanted to eat all the apple and avoid eating the sticker at the same time. Obvious, really.

If the stickers had to come off the apples, they had to come off other items even if I had no plans to tuck into the peel or the skin. It all seems so innocent now.

But then stickers began to spread to other products, and I can’t stop.

On CDs – yes, I still buy CDs, call me a dinosaur – there’s an awful anticipation every time. Some stickers peel off in one smooth movement, and it’s such a rush, but others appear to have been applied to the parent product with something approaching industrial strength superglue. Even if you manage to get them off, there’s an ugly patch of adhesive residue marring your pristine product.

However, it’s books that really rile me. I hate stickers on books, and that’s a fact. I wouldn’t like them whatever they said, and I would always want to remove them.

I especially don’t want stickers that tell the world that my chosen reading matter is a Richard & Judy recommendation, or is available as a ‘buy one, get one half price’ deal.

But one thing that drives me completely loopy is the sticker that isn’t a sticker at all – it’s built into the design of the cover to look like a sticker, but when you try and pick at the edge to peel it back there’s nothing there.

Now that’s an excuse to arm ourselves and start a bloodbath, wouldn’t you agree, Mr Obama?