Post-it Note

Hello. I am a Post-it Note. I am a small, square piece of paper, and I come in all the colors of the rainbow. My favorite color is bright yellow, just like the sun. I have a special secret. On my back, there is a stripe of gentle glue that lets me stick to things without being messy. My job is to be a little helper. I hold important reminders so people do not forget things. Before I was around, little papers used to fall out of books all the time, which was a big problem for readers everywhere.

My story began a long time ago, in the year 1968, with a happy accident. A very smart scientist named Dr. Spencer Silver was working hard in his lab. He was trying to make a super-duper, extra-strong glue that would hold things together forever. But he made a mistake. Oops. Instead, he made a silly glue. It was a little bit sticky, but not too sticky. You could stick it to something and then peel it right off, over and over again, and it did not leave any yucky stuff behind. At first, everyone thought the glue was a funny failure. They did not know what to do with it.

Then, another scientist named Art Fry had a little problem. He loved to sing in his choir on Sundays, and he used small pieces of paper to mark the songs in his big songbook. But they kept slipping and falling out. It made him feel very frustrated. One day in 1974, he remembered Dr. Silver’s silly, not-so-sticky glue. He had a wonderful, bright idea. What if he put a little bit of that special glue on his bookmark? He tried it, and it worked perfectly. The paper stayed right where he put it. And when he was done, he could peel it off without tearing the book's page. Just like that, I was born. I was the perfect bookmark.

At first, I was just a plain yellow color, as bright and happy as a little bird. In the year 1980, I was finally ready to go out and see the world. People loved me. They used me to leave little notes on the refrigerator, to mark pages in their school books, and to draw tiny pictures for their friends. I love my job so much. It makes me feel so proud to be a helpful little square, sticking around to help everyone remember all the important things and share their amazing ideas every single day.