What sticks inside

Note: This is sort of a free writing exercise I created while I was growing up. I'd turn on some music and latch onto a lyric from whatever song was playing and just wrote whatever came to my mind. Someone once said that free writing is the gateway to the soul. "Now, I don't know about that" as Forrest Gump would say, but I always found the end results interesting. Here we go. Let's open Pandora's box. (ha. ha. I am listening to Pandora right now, get it :)

"Last night I lived more than one thousand lives, not one of them survived" from the song Nearly Beloved - The Wallflowers; album - Rebel, Sweetheart

Last night I got to thinking while watching the Bears play the Vikings. Not about the game or how bad the Bears are, although that was hard to avoid.
I was thinking about second grade. That year I had a teacher who rewarded good work with stickers. Not on your paper, but still on the film so that you could stick it anywhere. So I started sticking them on my desk. Soon the kid sitting next to me took to the idea and before long we were racing to see who could cover the top of our desk first. It didn't take as long as you would think. Especially when we started bringing stickers from home or trading to get more from other friends. By mid-year the tops were full. Then we moved to the sides, the seat and legs and every spare spot we could find. It was like in an instant we wanted to beat each other in that and everything else. When we were on opposite sides during recess football or basketball, we were fierce. But at no point did we dislike each other. We just wanted to see each other lose.
So it was no surprise that my favorite team was the Bears and his was the Vikings. He wore a bright purple Starter jacket everyday to school. I had a blue and orange Bears one to answer.
I believe the Bears played the Vikings that year on Monday night in Metrodome. My memory might be wrong, but I believe it was the infamous game where Kevin Butler missed a last second field goal and a conspiracy grew that the air conditioners were turned on full boar when the ball was kicked forcing it left.
Anyway I remember him reveling in the win.
That's how it was. After that year, I don't think we were ever that close again. That's how things are sometimes as a kid in a school system. Each year you get a new desk neighbor. A new friend. A new rival.
But I always think about him every year when the Bear and Vikings meet up north in the dome. I remember when he died that I thought about how he liked the damned Vikings. So I guess I get over loses to Minnesota a little easier now.
I laugh a little actually. Because I remember second grade and our two desks covered in bright stickers and how we each lost about a week of recesses at the end of the year when the teacher made us clean them off. We sat there alone in the room. A wash bucket of soap and water on the floor and a sponge in each hand. Grinning as we tried, in vain, to get the sticky grime off the surface of our desks. We counted each one as they came off. Of course we did.
Now all these years later, I have a memory for each sticker in time, probably more than 1,000 all together. Where we'll each go? How many will I lose in a year or two? Will any survive the night much less a lifetime?