Sticker memories

Posted 1 day ago

This post was inspired by James. I read his Sticker Memories article earlier this week and started recalling several of my own sticker memories.

Sports stickers

Most of my earliest memories about stickers are related to sports. I remember collecting stickers for baseball teams. I used a lot of those stickers to decorate the dugout or the field of the baseball games I use to play with plastic baseball players. My dad built fences and dugouts for my field out of wood. Originally, I had set up fields in our attic, drawing chalk lines on the plywood floor. Later when my dad transformed that same attic into my bedroom, I requested that half of the room have tile so that I could set up my baseball fields.

I used masking tape for the baselines and lamented brown construction paper around the bases. My hometown team, Kansas City Royals, played on astroturf so the only dirt on the field was around the bases with a big circle around home plate. My dad made dugouts of wood and we painted them a light blue color. And on top of the paint went stickers of all the different teams in both leagues. I had collected most of them through bubble gum packs similar to baseball cards.

I probably also put those sport stickers, especially the ones of my favorite teams, on notebooks or school folders. Later, I made football fields and played with those same baseball players and a few plastic football players. I remember using stickers of the Kansas City Chiefs in the end zone.

I remember having both of these stickers. They were giving out by both of the teams as promotional items at the games or at different events that they hosted in the community. I believe I had one of those Royals stickers on a dugout and some of those Chiefs stickers in the end zones of the fields I made to play on.

I also collected stickers of baseball players that you could put in an accompanying sticker book. I used the extras to decorate a box that I stored my baseball cards in. I also remember collecting Star Wars stickers that also went into sticker books.

I still have a box of baseball cards with the player stickers on them.
I still have a lot of those baseball stickers that I collected when I was younger. Some of the ones here I used the top half of the bottom half, probably for one of those baseball games I described. You can see where I cut out the MLB logo from the Boston Red Sox sticker to use.

Stickers in the basement

Another sticker memory that I have also relates to playing sports. I use to play basketball, hockey, and indoor soccer in my basement. I remember that I stuck some stickers on a metal beam that ran along the ceiling of the basement. I had created a scoreboard. I used several stickers of a local radio station of others for sponsors. Those stickers still hang in the basement of my dad’s house.

I captured this in 2023 when I was home for my mom’s funeral

I remember that Dan Cederholm had created a sticker for his business that was similar to the STP sticker in the photo. I almost got Dan’s sticker because of the nostalgic value it held for me and the memories of the games that I played in that basement.

Stickers for my journals

I still collect stickers today. But the reason I collect them has changed. Most of the stickers I have are attached to a memory or something that I have a special attachment to. I still collect sports stickers. I collected several stickers related to the Chiefs winning three Super Bowls in the last five years. I bought a sticker to commemorate the Jayhawks winning the national championship in 2022. I have also collected stickers of teams that I have played with in MLB The Show because the stickers remind me of the fun times I had playing.

Most of the stickers that I collect now go on the front of my journals. And they usually are attached with some memory that happened when I was writing those specific journals. I started the practice after a summer trip to Hungary and then six months later, when I lived in eastern Hungary for nine months. I collected stickers of places we visited around Hungary and around Europe. I have an oval car sticker from several different countries. I have several stickers on different journals from Debrecen, the city we lived for nine months.

In recent years, I have collected stickers from the colleges that my kids have gone to and put those on my journals when I would visit. I have collected stickers from restaurants, web projects, the Tennessee Aquarium, conferences, and more. Each of these stickers represent memories and moments for me.

A sampling of stickers from journals over the last two years. I was so excited to add some European travel stickers when I visited Budapest and Barcelona in 2024.

Stickers on my computer

Interestedly enough, I have never been one to put stickers on my laptops. I know a lot of developers do that, especially ones who attend a lot of conferences and get free swag. Okay, so not totally true. I did decorate several of my laptops with specific design–sort of the pre-cursor to today’s laptop skins. But I have never done the random sticker thing on any of my computers.

My 2006 16″ MacBook Pro. I started with the center diamond and worked my way out. I used extras to decorate two other 13″ laptops.

I don’t have any stickers on my current laptops. I currently have a work laptop, which I don’t own and a personal laptop that my previous company let me keep after they let me go. I have toyed with the idea of getting a skin. I have seen several that spoke to me. But it also stresses me out to think about applying a skin and getting it on there without any air bubbles and perfectly aligned.

Thanks again to James for planting the idea in my head that led to me thinking about these different sticker memories. Do you have sticker memories? I would love to hear them. Post a link in the comments if this inspires you to write about your own.

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