When I was growing up, stickers were (in my mind) among the coolest things around. My sister and I actually collected stickers, not so much to stick on things, which would be their intended purpose, but just to have. While I was in elementary school, I had amassed what I believed to be the finest collection of "scratch-n-sniff" stickers in all the land. None of them had been taken off of their original "backing paper" and some of them really did smell quite good. Of course, looking back, there's not much more that you can do with stickers than to stick them to things and then look at them. Since I wasn't actually sticking them to anything, all I could really do with the damn things was...well...look at 'em. Well, that and "smell 'em"...I'm not sure what ever happened to those stickers, but I'm sure that once I grew out of the "sticker phase" of my life that I simply threw them away. They'd probably lost all of their smelly goodness by that time anyway...

Hey, it's better than sniffing drugs...Which brings me to the point of this post...

My wife, while rummaging through some of the "teaching oriented" things that she found in her classroom, found some stickers. The stickers were colorful, like stickers usually are, and featured cartoony, animal-like characters which kids tend to find "cute" and such. Since my wife teaches kids who are of a younger age, they tend to enjoy receiving a sticker for doing a good job. As such, she tossed these particular stickers in with the rest and forgot about them. At least, until a few days ago when they resurfaced in her sticker pile...My wife then noticed that these things carry an anti-drug message which, while well intentioned, simply wasn't carried out in the most effective manner...

There are two of these stickers left out of a collection of...however many there were, we can't be sure...My wife let me know that at least one sticker may, or may not, have been affixed to a student's paper. Odds are, if mommy or daddy isn't a meth cook in their spare time, somebody in their neighborhood IS, so at least the sticker's the message won't be totally lost...Unless the recipient of said sticker cannot "read," in which case...um...Never mind...Where were we?..Oh yeah.

What makes these stickers worth sharing, in my mind, is that, while they are specifically designed to be "anti-drug" stickers, and there's nothing wrong with that, these stickers seem to...oh...Let's say that they don't quite hammer the message home to the target market. It seems to me that the fine folks who produced these stickers just took the aforementioned "anti-drug" message and slapped it together with whatever "stock art" they had lying around. As proof of this, I offer the first of the two remaining stickers, featuring Dopey the Duck:

Now, you tell me...What the Hell does a duck with an umbrella have to do with "pushing dope?" Is this a representation of what you'll see when you're under the influence? Is this how you'll act, maybe? Irrational? Why would a duck NEED an umbrella? Where, then are his (or her) galoshes? It makes no sense. I guess that you COULD make the argument that the duck itself is named "dope" and that it just wouldn't be friendly to push the little mofo around. The duck's tired of your crap, people, and he (or she) is simply not gonna take it anymore...

um...heh...

And I now present to you the second sticker, which seems to imply that Garfield does heavy drugs in his spare time:

Now, I don't claim to know a whole lot about crack beyond how to make it (I learned that from the Weekly Reader in 1985) but I have a pretty good idea that kids who are exposed to crack on a regular basis probably won't give a shit what the forlorn cartoon cat thinks, even if his body seems to come to a disturbing and mysterious termination near the bottom...Imagine, if you will, the scenario:

"Hey, kid, you wanna get high?"

"Sure, man, whatchoo got?"

"I gots dope and I's gots crack! Take yo' pick!"

"Oh, no way man. The duck and the cat said not to, 'cause now you ain't my friend and if I take the crack, I'll crash and the cat said..."

"Look, kid, you want 'dis shit or not?"

"Yeah...Screw them damn stickers..."

I'm no expert, but I'm thinkin' that if you REALLY want to turn kids off of the idea of trying drugs, don't use cute little animals to deliver the message, don't try and sugar coat the whole thing, just come out and say it! Drug's will kick your ass! Have stickers that say scary things like "Crack burns your lips and rots your insides," or "Tommy did drugs and he died an excruciating death, all the while screaming in tortuous pain." Granted, THAT sticker would have to be unusually large, but still...The message would get out...Even if it's not true, I don't think that I'd be willing to "test the waters," so to speak...

oh, and while I have your attention, don't "meth" around in the kitchen. That sticker has a cuddly bunny rabbit wearing an apron, If I'm not mistaken...

Labels: pointless shit