According to the New York Times, it was on this date in 1907 that Christmas Seals went on sale for the first time, at the post office in Wilmington, Delaware, to raise money to fight tuberculosis. When I read that this morning it brought back a memory ...
I was very young, probably under three. My mother and I had stopped (while walking home from shopping, probably) at a house up the block, just for a minute, my mother said, because there was something she had to say or do or give to the woman who lived there. We didn’t take our coats off, because we weren’t going to stay long.
Well, those two young housewives got to talking, of course, and I was bored out of my mind, of course. The woman had a little boy about my age, and while our mothers chatted near the front door, he and I entertained ourselves in a nearby room by licking the back of several sheets of Christmas Seals and gluing them to the top of the table.
I don’t remember what happened after that. Perhaps our mothers’ reactions were so violent that I’ve repressed it, or maybe they just thought it was funny.
But every now and then over the last 60 years, I’ve wondered how that woman was able to scrape those Christmas Seals off of that table top. They were glued on there good. I saw to that.
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