A Minor Setback, and Further Adventures in Archives

So it develops that Professor Famous cannot be my outside reader. But fear not, dear reader, for CheeseQuest is undaunted and will turn now to Professor Respectable, who may in fact be a better match.

In other excitement, I had another archive caper last week. Poring over fan letters written in 1984 to a fiction factory, I came across one from a girl who affixed two stickers to her epistle. Gracious, I whispered, I think I had that sticker! Then I realized it was a scratch-and-sniff—a round, yellow circle with a green smiley fact that read "Dino-MITE!" Furtively, I cast a glance about the dim reading room to make sure no one was watching, and rubbed the sticker slightly.

Reader, I sniffed it.

Ah, the sweet scent of lemon drops, made even sweeter by the knowledge that this sensory experience had transcended the mists of time. What I smelled, she had smelled. And the realization that I probably owned that sticker, and that the author of this document was approximately the same age as I, made me think that on some level I knew her—we breathed as one.


Desperate to give you a sense of my experience, I looked for this sticker online. Alas, no yellow "Dino-MITE!"s, but I did find this gumball machine, which I am positive was in the same family of stickers. Enjoy it to whatever extent you can.