THE STAPLER
"'Freddy,'" I can hear Mom saying, 'we need office stuff. Rubber bands. A pencil sharpener. And a stapler, for chrissakes!'”
The grimy film of permanent dust cannot be wiped off. The hardened bits of tape on the top and sides aren’t going anywhere either—kind of like the stapler itself. It was my mother’s. It must be about 60 years old now, and it’s strong. Though it was of course designed to keep papers together, I find it does the job for memories too.
It was probably purchased in the mid-1960s at Charney's, the local stationery store in what was then the sleepy shore town of Toms River, New Jersey. Maybe my father decided the Texaco station he and my mother ran was doing well enough that buying a stapler was no longer a luxury. Or maybe Mom, since she was the one who did the books, insisted. "Freddy," I can hear her saying, “I want to keep things in order here. We need office stuff. Rubber bands. A pencil sharpener. And a stapler, for chrissakes!”
Somehow it went from the cluttered closet-turned-office of Fred’s Texaco to the Formica-countered kitchen of my childhood home, 847 Regency Court. I didn’t play gas station, but when I was very young I loved playing diner, and I stapled together stacks of yellow scrap paper to make my order pads. “One order of chicken parm with a side of spaghetti!” I’d yell from the counter. Mom, at the stove stirring, flipping or steaming one thing or another, would say, “Coming right up, love.” She was the kind who didn’t miss a beat.
Just as I was entering kindergarten, my parents separated. The stapler came along to the tiny apartment my mother, two sisters, brother and I moved into; I know because I remember using it to do art projects with the boy who lived with his mother in the apartment across the way. I remember wondering if he shared a bedroom with his mom the way I did with mine.
Later, during my mother’s Avon Lady years, I used the stapler to attach receipts and foil packets of sample hand lotion to the fancy paper bags Mom packed her customers’ orders in. When the orders were ready, we’d drive house to house and she’d let me hop out, ring the doorbells and present the bags of perfume and bubble bath and lipsticks. She had a little rubber stamp: Catherine Pontoriero, Your Avon Representative. I loved delivery days.
My parents got back together. The stapler returned to 847 Regency Court, reclaimed its place in the kitchen under the olive-green wall phone, resumed being a magnet for dust and grease. The dusty, greasy particles of daily life.
A few days ago I went to the small desk in my own kitchen and used the stapler on some receipts from Target. It’s funny that rubbing my finger on a grimy metal surface should make me think of my mom, but it does: her belief in headscarves and handkerchiefs, her love for Engelbert Humperdinck and prison movies (“pictures,” she called them), the inexplicable way she always said the name Peter with a British accent. How nice she always smelled, and how she appreciated other people who did too. November will be 26 years since she died. But the stapler helps hold us together, close and tight.
—Kathy Curto
Kathy Curto is a writing professor and the author of Not for Nothing—Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. She lives in the Hudson Valley with her family and is the enthusiastic steward of a Little Free Library.
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Oh my gosh! I love this. When I first started teaching in the 1970s, I was issued a Swingline black stapler. It was a beast of a stapler and also could have been used as a weapon. Later in the 1980s, I had an office supply salary (instead of being supplied with one) and I bought my own Swingline, but this time a red one to make it stand out. I wrote my name on a slip of paper and adhered it with tape to the top. I would not let anyone borrow it unless I knew them well and they left collateral. LOL No one doubted who that stapler belong to, and when I retired from 32 years of teaching, I brought that red Swingline stapler home with me. Signature and legacy items. I will allow one of my nephews to inherit it when I die. Loved your story. Made me smile.
This is a wonderful keepsake and memory. It's funny how little objects can stir up such vivid memories. I don't have a lot of "stuff" from my childhood, but memories like yours bring to mind my Dad's basement office, the stapler and adding machine that of course we were forbidden to touch but ... we never broke either tho so unsure if he ever really knew. Thank you!