I have many bookmarks.

And by bookmarks, I mean tiny pieces of paper or old receipts or expired coupons that find their way into my books.

Part of the reason for this is that I can’t ever seem to find the few actual bookmarks I own when I go to start a new book, which leads me to the other reason:  said bookmarks are already being used within other books.

I tend to read multiple books at one time.

Or maybe I should say that I “start” to read multiple books at one time.  Over the years, there are more than a handful of books that I’ve drifted away from during a chapter that lagged and simply never finished them.

But I digress.  I came here to discuss bookmarks.

And sometimes you don’t even need bookmarks.  For example, one book I’m in the middle of is on my tablet.  The magical electronic device remembers my page for me.  In fact, when I was a kid, I didn’t even use bookmarks most of the time.  I just remembered the page number where I stopped.

My memory is no longer equipped for such a task.

Granted, my OCD forces me to look at the page numbers when I’m turning them to make sure I don’t miss a page {as if I wouldn’t notice}, but whether I put the book down for a few hours or a few days {or a few months}, I now find bookmarks to be essential.

Even tho I recently used a recipe that I’d cut from the back of a box of pasta as a bookmark, my normal go-to these days is two Post-it notes stuck together.  I usually have little pads of them lying around to jot down ideas or phone messages or grocery lists.  And I’ve found that by taking two Post-it notes and sticking them to each other with the sticky edges at opposite ends, it makes a nice sturdy square of paper.

Perfect for an impromptu bookmark.

But the fact that it also looks precisely like a normal Post-it note is what lead me to believe that my four-year-old daughter was just playing with a piece of the nearby pad of Post-its when I saw the yellow paper in her hand.

Until she opened up my big hardcover book, stuck the Post-it in between some pages, and closed it again.

Recognition {and panic} dawned.

“Was… was that my bookmark?  Did you take it out of my book?!?”

“Yes,” she answered, smiling sweetly.  “But I put it back.”

{photo source:  Zazzle}