Merriam Webster defines sticky:
That’s a lot of definitions for a little word, and yet STICKY seems to keep popping up in even more contexts. A newspaper article recently used it to refer to certain decisions:
Retirements tend to be "stickier" than other labor force exits, the researchers wrote. Even so, they expect that an improving virus situation and increased vaccination will allow older workers to return to the labor force.I’m not even sure what they mean. That the decision to retire isn’t often reversed? Or that it’s difficult (and problematic?) to make in the first place. I like it either way.
Then sticky turns up in an upcoming meeting’s call for presentations: “experiential sessions that help writers generate ideas, get motivated, and work through sticky spots in their writing.”
I use it as a noun to refer to Post-It Notes. I call them “yellow stickies,” even when they’re pink.
Then there’s the person who has "sticky fingers" (a thief), but a sticky person needs to take a bath. Or is overly clingy. A sticky website header is one that stays anchored on the screen when a user scrolls
Finally, combined with icky, it’s become a pseudonym for marijuana. There’s a company, Sticky Icky, that touts itself as the premier weed delivery service serving San Francisco, in case anyone needs to know.
But my favorite meaning is the way that professional organizer Kathy Vines (Clever Girl Organizing) uses the term when she talks about those ostensibly useless possessions that her downsizing clients are so emotionally attached to that they can’t throw them away.
My grandmother’s rubber band ball comes to mind. Or my mother’s reading glasses.
And as I go through my husband’s piles of papers and clippings, whenever I encounter a doodle of his, a little ping goes off in my brain – STICKY – and I set it aside with the hundreds of thousands of other bits of marginalia he left me.
I know my children won’t be able to throw them away, either. Super-sticky across generations.
Look around. What’s a “sticky” object in your life that you don’t need but need to keep?
