A short story

A small girl of six or seven sits in a rocking chair on her front porch. In her hands, there is a collection of Halloween stickers. Looking them over, she absently rocks back and forth in the wooden chair. How she wishes to use some of the stickers! But she knows she can't; the stickers belong to her older sister. Temptation prods her again; her sister never uses them, why can't she have them? She ponders this as she scans a page full of the stereotypical figures that are used to represent Halloween: the black cat with its back arched, the witch on a broom-stick, Jack-o-lanterns with scary faces, white ghosts flying among dead trees that shout "Boo!", skeletons, and various words in a creepy font where the letters look like they're dripping, such as "Spooky" or "Haunted House". The girl knows that if she asked her sister if she could have the stickers, her sister would snatch them away with a "No! You can't have them. Why, did you take some already?" The younger girl would shake her head, "No, I didn't take any." Which would be a lie, but her sister wouldn't notice. "Why won't you let me have any? You never look at them or anything!" Here she would slip into tantrum mode; and tears would spring to her eyes. The girl knows her sister would stick her tongue out at her and stalk off with a, "Because they're mine!"

The girl is never content with this answer, not even in her made-up scenario with her asking her sister for the stickers. Her sister never cared for the stickers, she got them at some Halloween party or another, and then showed them to her mom. Then the small girl's sister forgot about them, and left them on the kitchen table. Their mom, while tidying up, came across them and put them in their "Halloween box". This "Halloween box" is full of decorations and things the children have made in school that pertain to Halloween. The next Halloween is when the small girl finds them again. The stickers are more the box's than her sister's. What makes her sister care about the stickers only when they are coveted by someone else? The little girl, with her active imagination, tries to think about various reasons why her sister wants the stickers. Are they a secret treasure map? Written in invisible ink? She turns the stickers over, no, the other side has little logos of "Mrs. Grossman's" on them. No map or code. She seems to think she would be able to see invisible ink.

The little girl floats back down to Earth in her thoughts, and thinks if maybe this has something to do with human nature. She remembers a quote from a book she recently read, though she isn't quite sure what it means. "The reason why we don't throw things away is because we are afraid others might pick them up." She certainly didn't think that giving the stickers to her was throwing them away, but still, the quote came to mind. Oh, if she could only solve this mystery like those girls in her books, she'd have so much fun with the stickers! Her sister never had fun with them, she never paid them any attention.

All of a sudden it clicks in her mind. The reason why her sister won't give them to her is because she's afraid that she'll have fun with them! This statement she could back up with a few reasons. It's her sister's nature to not want the girl to have fun. She supposes all older sisters were like that. And, if her sister gave her the stickers, the girl would have fun, and her sister would see how her younger sister had fun with them, and want them back so she could have fun with them too. The small girl grins to herself, that didn't quite make sense. She still has difficulty putting her thoughts in words; she had, after all, just learned about words only a few years ago.

The small girl gets up and put the stickers back in the box. She knows she would never have them. By the time her sister is willing to give them up, she would no longer care for them either. Just then, her mom comes out of the house, locking the door as she goes. They are going shopping. "Mom, can I get some stickers?" the girl asks.
"No dear, look at all those in the box."
"But those are my sister's. I wan my own."
"Well, your sister can share them."
The girl already knows this is false, she has a good ten minutes of thoughts to back it up. But she doesn't pursue the subject any further. She hops into the car, her mind already on other things.

Well, it's not exactly a true story, I never thought about arguing with "They're mine", but I don't think all this insight would have helped me back then anyway. ttyl!