Galvin crop

In the box was a copper-colored sticker. I had not intended to buy a copper-colored sticker, nor was I expecting to receive one unrequested.

But, now I had one — two, actually, as it turns out.

What I did buy was a new laptop computer. It works fine, thank you. It also not only works much faster than the laptop it was replacing, but it seems to think much faster than its operator.

It appears to know in advance what I am intending to say, for instance, and it has an uncanny ability to anticipate my needs.

Although, to repeat, it incorrectly assessed my need for a pair of copper-colored stickers shaped like pieces of fruit with a bite taken out of them.

However, now given such a gift, it seems incumbent upon me to do something with them. What, I did not know. I asked the other occupant of the house (no, not the cat), but she was busy attempting to navigate a drop-down menu.

I helped her out with that task, but she was unable to assist with mine. So, then there were two of us (and the cat) who had no concept of what to do with the stickers.

For help, I turned to the new laptop — these were its stickers, after all — so that I could go ogle a search engine.

“By including the stickers in their products,” I was informed by one of the 132 million results that appeared in 0.48 seconds, the laptop company was “tapping into an emotional connection and reinforcing the sense of belonging that its customers feel.

“It’s a symbol of community, identity, and creativity.”

And here I thought it was just a sticker, a tad anodyne one at that, which once applied to a surface, would be impossible to remove.

I’d be stuck. Stuck with that identity, that community, that “emotional connection.”

“You’re one of us now,” the forbidden bitten-fruit stickers seemed to say to me.

I pictured myself as Donald Sutherland, trying to look inconspicuous while walking among the pod people or, worse, one of those sitting in their idling vehicle in that coiled line that rerouted traffic as it slithered toward the grand opening of that hamburger place which promised “No Delay” as you enter and leave with your order.

Flapdoodle, hogwash, balderdash, she said (or words to that effect). I was overthinking the culture shock of ability of the stickers to control my mind and lead me into temptation.

And by the way, she added, pumpkin spice is back!

Yes, should spoke the exclamation point into being. It apparently cannot be noted that “pumpkin spice is back” without the use — inflected or printed — of the exclamation point. The only other time it is allowed is when describing the return of the slender slab of rib-like meat.

Frankly, I think it’s a bit too early for pumpkin spice to be back. Sure, it’s September, but it certainly doesn’t seem like pumpkin weather. Before you know it, and before the leaves fall, peppermint mochas will perform their annual rite of kicking pumpkin spice to the curb.

None of this, though, was helping me with the dilemma of the copper-colored stickers.

I could dispose of them the old-fashioned way, but that likely would prompt a letter from a reader concerned with adding to the excessive stickerization of public landfills. I might be able to get away with simply leaving them in the box, but the thought of them sitting there — useless and ignored — made me think that I’d be breaking the bonds of “emotional connection” that were the stickers’ raison d’être.

There was but one solution — elegant in its simplicity, being both eco-friendly and unlikely to cost me my standing in the bitten-fruit community.

I had not ordered, asked for, or wanted the stickers in the first place. So, I have returned them to sender — so that someone else might benefit from their imbued sense of belonging.

Satisfied with that passive act of tribal declination, we set off to live consciously and eat deliciously — washed down with pumpkin spice which, as I am told, is back!