The label-maker I

The first time Bob affixed something to Doris, he was five. From a sheet of stickers his mother had given him for obediently observing bedtime for the last three days, he decided on a circle, medium size, because his mind could not handle corners. And even as he did not understand, the circle happened to be green because he had seen the way Doris laughed with the other boy.

Bob approached Doris on short unsteady legs, adjusting the underpants he was not yet accustomed to wearing. Acutely unaware of the boundaries of acceptable personal space, and openly ignorant of the inappropriateness of interrupting a schoolyard tête-à-tête, Bob stepped between the boy and Doris to attach the green circle to her shoulder. Doris shrieked, pushed him to the ground, and sped off on her three-wheel pushbike.

Bob dragged his feet all the way home. He found no solace in his mother's enveloping embrace. He refused to be comforted by the promise of chocolate ice-cream. Despite going to bed even earlier than usual, he cried well into the night.

What he did not know, and never subsequently found out, was that Doris rushed home for her favourite doll. She carefully lifted its dress hemmed by disproportionate lace to reveal its flawless plastic, and gently moved the green circle from her shoulder to the middle of the doll’s back. By the time Bob could no longer see the painted clouds on his bedroom ceiling through his tears, Doris had clasped her doll in both hands and squeezed her eyes shut, momentously marking the first acquisition in her collection of Bob’s sticker-thoughts over the next thirty years.