Once, when I was a child, I picked up an old issue of “Walt Disney Magazine”, while my dad was filling up his Dodge Dart with gas at a neighorhood filling station. This magazine has probably been out of print for years by now. I remember nothing at all from the issue except for the following piece of trivia, which I suspect was written just for fun, apropos of nothing:<\/p>\n
\n“In 1968 alone, eight tons of paper were wasted by the United States Postal Service on perforations for postage stamps.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I have no reason to doubt this statement. It seems perfectly reasonable to me in every way. But what I admired about it then, and still admire about it now, is its pure triviality. In a world awash with useless facts, there is something almost poetically pure about holding onto this one.<\/p>\n
For reasons that I cannot quite explain on any pure rational basis, but which I find deeply satisfying on an emotional level, I have treasured this little factoid for all these years. And so, as a child, I committed it to memory, word for word.<\/p>\n
I’m sure that at one time, millions of kids across America read this very same statement in the very same issue of “Walt Disney Magazine”. For all I know, some may remember it still. Others may feel only a vague stirring, some inchoate sense of nostalgia and undefined longing, whenever they lick a postage stamp, without ever quite knowing why. Over time this eccentric little factoid has undoubtedly faded from the collective memory.<\/p>\n
But I remember it all exactly – the time and place where I first read it – at a gas station in the back seat of our family car. It has stayed with me all of these years – a pure, useless, and oddly delightful bit of mental detail. Until now that is, when at last I share it with you, and so release it back into the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once, when I was a child, I picked up an old issue of “Walt Disney Magazine”, while my dad was filling up his Dodge Dart with gas at a neighorhood filling station. This magazine has probably been out of print for years by now. I remember nothing at all from the issue except for the … Continue reading “Perforations for postage stamps”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1305,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1302\/revisions\/1305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}