There's something you should know about me. I am an inadvertent shoplifter. I discovered this last night as I began working on a scrapbook for my mom-- a retrospective of last year's trip to Disney World. Ideally, I will have this project complete by Monday, my mom's birthday, but we shall see. (Please note that if my mom reads my blog this week, she'll know about this and it will ruin the surprise. But the real surprise will be whether I can finish it or not.) Anyway, while in the wonderfully commercialized and very much "branded" (a marketing/PR term that is very hot right now) theme park, I was aware of my future plans to create a scrapbook and therefore purchased a pack of stickers. The stickers are the logos of all the different theme parks (Animal Kingdom, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Disney/MGM). Logos are also a very important part of branding.

So last night, as I began to lay out some of the scrapbook pages, I decided to open the pack of stickers. As I grasped the package's cellophane wrapping by the corner, I made a shocking discovery. There was not one, but two packs of stickers- they were stuck together so tightly that no one had noticed-- not me, not the cashier. My first reaction was one of excitement-- wow, I could put logos all over the place in the scrapbook (there are two sheets of stickers per package). But almost immediately I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt. I didn't pay for those stickers (If, however, you want to get technical about it, between the $10 hamburgers, $3 bottles of water, and other outrageous prices, those stickers are probably more than paid for). Anyway, there's nothing I can do about it now. It's been almost a year since the trip (yet I still haven't done the scrapbook), and I can't very well just send them back.

But still, those stickers seem tainted somehow. Even though I didn't mean to, I stole them. From the happiest place on earth, of all places.