When the Day Smells Like Bonnie Bell Giant Lip Smacker on a Rope

There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. - Cynthia Helmel

I was sitting in traffic when a song I haven't heard since I was a kid just floated over to me. Olivia Newton John's Magic - do you remember that one? Good times. I scanned the cars around me until I found its source. It was a beat-up ancient orange Corvette, driven by a putzy middle-aged guy complete with moustache, and he was just chilling, tapping his hands on his steering wheel to the beat of a song I used to listen to more than twenty years ago.

When I shared this with my cousin, we were swept by nostalgia. She started singing songs from the Xanadu track, and I could distinctly smell scented erasers and grape Bubble Yum as she serenaded me with Whenever You're Away From Me.

This led to a discussion on our shared childhood obsession with stickers, and then suddenly my cousin interrupted and demanded, "Where can we find those tins? You know, those tins with the lids that slide across and have lipgloss in them?"

I remember those tins! I told her of this amazing store I used to frequent as a pre-preteen. It was called "Things Things Things" and it had not only the lipgloss, but EVERYTHING Sanrio. And, I kid you not, an entire wall that housed ceramic unicorns. I'll give you a moment to collect yourself. They were the Cadillac of ceramic unicorns, too. Not the cheap, shiny glass kind. They were made of some sort of matte ceramic, and the flowers (because there were always flowers) were formed so perfectly it just made your heart ache. You could buy a standing unicorn, the kneeling unicorn pointing his horn into the ceramic bed of pink flowers and glass or perhaps you wanted a bit of the whimsy and liked the unicorn in mid-leap. There wasn't a unicorn pose they didn't have.

One Christmas, I saved enough money to buy a kneeling unicorn for my friend, Tara. I was jumping out of my skin to give it to her, and called her house over Christmas break.

"Tara! I have a present for you! Come over!"

"I don't know. Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

I was speechless. Bigger than a breadbox? What good thing could possibly be larger than bread, other than a stuffed unicorn, of course.

It was a wonderful trip down memory lane, and nice to know that I've always been a woman who understands that the best gifts come in small packages.