don't wash a name tag

It is important to always remove a sticker name tag from your clothing before washing.

Good advice, right?

Advice is usually given because the giver usually has experienced said advice.

In this case, that is true.

The first night of workcamp we all wore name tags. You know the kind. The ones that you write your own name, peel it off, and stick it wherever you want people to stare as they try to remember your name (I aim for my shoulder).

Perfectly acceptable. We learned many names, plus it was painless, cheap and simple.

Painless, cheap and simple unless you were like me and you threw your shirt in your dirty laundry bag, forgetting to remove the name tag (forgetting due to extreme heat - that's my story and I'm sticking to it). And if you're like me, you turn your dirty clothes inside out so you know that they're dirty. Then when you get home you make piles of laundry. Then you start the laundry. Only when you go to fold the laundry do you realize the remnants of the name tag on the shirt.

What a sticky mess.

I picked. I peeled. I washed and dried it again. By this point not much remains of the sticker. Just a few globs of sticker "glue" clinging to the shirt for all it's worth. What gets sticky off better than sticky? (A trick we learned in band to clean our flute pads; a dirty dollar bill would remove the dirt, dirt sticks to dirt.) I pulled out the lint roller, peeled off the old sheet, revealing a new sheet and went to town rolling off the old glue.

It worked. Finally.

Because I needed another t-shirt. I don't have enough.

(I'm being sarcastic. I have enough t-shirts to fill two dresser drawers full and half of a shelf in the closet. I still have a t-shirt I got at Busch Gardens when we went there in 1991. It still fits! Or rather, it fits again!)