Do you remember when you were in grade school and, in a fit of boredom, you would slather Elmer’s glue on your palms, filling the deep grains between each of your fingers? How you would get a shiver not only from the chill of the paste, but from the thrill of doing something that was ill-advised. When you would peel off this layer of skin, looking at the fingerprints you were told were only your own, a memento to take with you everywhere you went. Do you remember when in your sophomore year of college, when all you wanted was to fall into the abyss of folded-until-soft papers and exams and Bic Cristal pens; when all you wanted was to fit in? Do you remember that time that you went to that party, the first one you let your feet carry you to with the puke green flyer in hand foreshadowing the night’s events ahead? Do you remember when you took out your worn deck of cards and a little tube in your pocket that you always kept “just in case”? You had meant to impress them with your card-stacking prowess, because how else were you to make yourself memorable? You told them to give you five minutes. In about two and a quarter, they went for their ninth round of some kind of sickly sweet alcohol. You took out your tube, a faded label that distinctly read Krazy Glue, and took the Queen of Hearts and the Jack of Spades in between your fingers with their unique fingerprints. Do you remember when you built that house of cards with small drips of the adhesive seeping out of the seams, but the people you sought out were too intoxicated to see them? They clapped and cheered in drunken awe and you became the “party giraffe with those big sparkles - the things that never leave your face. Trust me I’ve tried.”, as one of your new comrades had said. Do you remember what happened when you went back to your dorm that night on seemingly transplanted feet, weaving between the bushes hoping not to see that shade of green on your shoes the next morning? You put the contents of that tube all over your fingers, in between them where your Texas-shaped birthmark laid. And you ripped it off. Without mercy. The process wasn’t as pleasant as you seem to have remembered. It stung, but at least your unique fingerprints were gone, or so you thought. At least you could be that “party giraffe” like you’d always wanted, I guess. Do you remember that by the next morning the tube was empty? Do you remember that when you tied your shoes at 7:43 a.m. that morning for your Intro to Psychology course, the lines across your joints felt as if they were on fire? Do you remember when your new comrade “gave you five” and, despite the pain, you smiled and laughed with him? Do you remember your trip to Staples that afternoon, when a mousy employee asked you if you needed help finding anything and you said no because you’d been to that aisle a million times before, in grade school and now in sophomore year of college? But today you walked past the shelves of Elmer’s glue: “dries clear”, “now with purple glitter”, “turns your hand blue where it touches, sponsored by Smurfs 4”. You walked right past these plastic bottles and to your trusty tubes of Krazy Glue. Red and green and reminding you of your beautiful house of cards, the drips of adhesive no longer a figment of that memory.