Oh, I prefer not to label myself

 My brothers and I had iron-in labels for summer camp, painstakingly hand-written in laundry pen. I don't remember school clothes ever being labeled, and I'm sure we would have thought it was dorky (although the preferred term at the time was probably "retarded" (sorry!) or "mental").  If we lost something (and we did) it was our fault, and nobody was going to return it, since they didn't know whose it was and would never have thought to check. A labeled jacket in 5th grade is still kind of dorky, but I'm sure today's super-cautious parents are extending their over-protectiveness to cover not only their children but their children's stuff as well. And I can't guarantee that I won't do the same-- that stuff is expensive!-- and if everyone else has labels too at least my kids won't stand out for dorkiness. Where everyone's a dork...

So here are Mabel's Labels. They make neat little stick-ons to adhere to the size- or care-tags in all your twenty-dollar Gymboree tee-shirts, and super-sticky waterproof, rub-proof ones for your  Sigg bottle and your lead-free lunch bag, neither of which we had back then either (we ate lead and we liked it, darn it), and even cunning dog-tag-style hang-tags for your backpack. None of these seem strictly necessary to anyone who owns a Sharpie, but they are undoubtedly convenient, and a pile of freshly matching-labeled fall clothes will likely provide the ship-shape, everything-in-its-place pleasure familiar from contemplating a nice new stack of school supplies: fresh, clean, full of promise, and best of all, yours. 

I did kind of horrify myself by ordering his in primary colors, with fire-truck icon, and hers in the "princess" colorway, with, what else,  princess icon. I'm getting over it, though. My kids are who they are. The just ran through here, Avi in the same play-clothes he'd been to the park in, and Lilah in her fairy-p'incess dress with matching pointy p'incess hat, and ladybug wings.

"Ooooo, I'm a ghost!" said Avi, pulling a pillow-case over his head. 

"Aaaaaah!" i shrieked, obligingly, while eyeing Lilah who stood there, expectantly, waiting for her shriek.

"You're not so scary," I said. "Sorry."

"But I a ghost ladybug," she clarified. 

What she needed was a label to that effect. You can't leave these things up to other people; they never get it right. 

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