In the 80s, between Mini-stars and Ondachoc records, the youth card and "A Minha Agenda," Portugal discovered a small scented obsession: "dear little sheets."
Anyone who lived through that decade will fondly remember the smell that came from the small blocks, with cheesy designs printed without contrast, like watermarks, with aromas ranging from fake grape to synthetic strawberry.
These scented sheets, sold in stationery stores (that temple of a child's dream), were not just a trivial object. It wasn't enough to just take your allowance and buy them. It required years invested in trading with school friends, with older cousins, with the daughter of parents' friends who would visit one day and had access to many rarer blocks that didn't exist in our neighborhood. The lucky ones were those who had an entire block, which they could then trade sheet by sheet with others.
Inside folders lined with magazine clippings; in notebooks with pierrots, Mafaldas, and Sarah Kay illustrations; in Hello Kitty envelopes or a crumpled plastic sleeve: the little sheets offered more than the obsession of collecting and the joy of a rare find; they were above all a way of belonging to the universe of the little girls' group at school.
For those who didn't experience this phenomenon, I think it's fair to compare this trend to boys' sticker collections, although those persist to this day and are easier to complete. The collection of "dear little sheets" had no end, and only had one rival: the collection of scented erasers.
Today, these little sheets (you can't say it in the singular) evoke more than the discreet aroma they emitted. They represent an era when children weren't flooded with screens, when there was no internet, and when toys were very few and not very varied.
Receiving a new "dear little sheet" for the collection was a huge joy. Beyond the obvious nostalgia, there's a lesson: beauty and memory often reside in the simplest gestures.
4 comments
Que nostalgia este post! Tudo o que vivi na infância. Voltar a estas memórias deixa imensas saudades mas que bom reencontrar e reviver esses tempos.
Guardo com saudade a coleção de borrachinhas, alguns bloquinhos de folhas, e algumas folhinhas, a maioria acho que a minha Mãe se livrou delas.. era uma loucura quando conseguia uma raridade, era pura magia entre miúdas ❤️😊
Como foi incrível relembrar esse tempo. Realmente eram as coisas mais simples que enchiam o nosso coração. A pureza da nossa infância (80’s) tem se perdido com a “evolução” dos tempos.
Ooooh que saudades das folhinhas de cheiro.
Adoro os vossos textos são tão bem escritos, parabéns 🌸