Smile-breaks
How'd She Do That?
All my life I've fought those tiny white price stickers on the gift of jewelry for my friend's birthday or the pottery for my daughter-in-law's garden or the—well, you know how it is. Some of those stickers peel right off. Yay! But it's a huge surprise when they do. The rest of them stay stuck and fingernails, blow dryers, ice cubes and all sorts of other weapons fight you to the finish. If you get there. Most times you don't. Most times you're lucky if you scrape half of the numbers off.
When I went to the Hallmark store to look for graduation and birthday gifts the other day I got lucky and found something for everyone. I put all seven items on the counter; the salesclerk rang them up and, as I reached for my credit card, she asked if I wanted her to remove the price tags.
Of course! That's a given! No one wants to go home and scratch away at tiny stuck-on price stickers, ruining their fingernails, not to mention their formerly good temperament resulting from finding everything in one store. Especially me. I put on a friendly smile and said, "Sure. I'd appreciate that," and before I could pull my credit card out of my wallet—ZAP!
What was that? I looked up to see what had happened and—ohmigosh! The jewelry box was completely stripped of its price tag.
"How did you do that?" I asked in amazement and no, I'm not going to tell you what she said. Not yet anyway. You know, got'ta keep up the suspense. Besides, I didn't know yet either so you're not alone.
There were six more items to go. I had plenty of time to watch and see if she could do that again. She did but she did it so fast I could hardly see what she was doing. Zap! Zap! Zap! Three more price stickers gone. Three to go.
I don't know if you've ever discovered an easy way to do something you'd been struggling with for decades and suddenly someone shows you a way to do it that's so easy you almost wish you could go into a time machine and return to all those times you struggled just so you could do it over the new easy way—well, I felt that way, watching her nimble fingers zapping the price stickers off every item, but then I remembered a few parts of my past I'd rather not revisit, so I changed my mind.
Not wanting you to live your life not knowing how to remove price stickers the easy way, I'm ready to tell you what she did. I admit I haven't tried it myself because I'm afraid if I can't do it I'll get totally depressed and if I can do it, I'll be mad no one told me about it years ago. But for you, here it is.
She pulled off a length of tape slightly longer than the price sticker, placed it carefully over the sticker with both ends extending beyond the sticker, rubbed the tape, then holding firmly to the end of it, yanked! The entire sticker came off in one piece, stuck to the tape. Seven times she did this with no misses, so it couldn't have been luck.
"What kind of tape is that," I asked in amazement.
"Scotch tape," she said. Can you believe it? Plain ol' Scotch tape.
Give it a try next time you're looking at the price sticker on a gift you just bought. Let me know how it goes.