By Sammi Dorfan (’18)
It’s been months since middle school children first started harassing their parents and older siblings to take them to Michaels to purchase excessive amounts of borax, Elmer’s glue, shaving cream, and food coloring. While it might seem peculiar for twelve and thirteen year-olds to be in possession of such random and futile ingredients, to the perpetrators, however, these are valuable commodities, forces to be reckoned with. In reference to her seventh grade sister, Jenna Friedman (‘18) said, “It’s so annoying. It’s messy. It gets everywhere. She’s obsessed and it’s all she does.”
The process begins when, instead of solving math problems or punctuating sentences, the young teenagers use their nimble fingers to squirt copious amounts of glue into a bowl. Next, they add shaving cream and lotion, making sure that those ingredients don’t mix prematurely with the glue because that would result in unviable slime. After a couple of precious moments have passed, the tweens gradually stir in a borax and water mixture until they achieve the desired consistency. To make the goop more aesthetically pleasing, they drop in some food coloring, watching in awe as it mingles with the rest of the mixture. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the young creators take videos of themselves fondling their slime and post them on Instagram, making sure to capture the gastric sounds. Hannah Marx (‘18) describes these videos as “so captivating.”
It’s quite ironic that middle schoolers, strangers to the stress that comes with extreme amounts of school work, are the ones who benefit from the cathartic nature of the slime. Perhaps, instead of burning the midnight oil, high school students should emulate the creativity of their younger counterparts and relieve stress in the process. Annabelle Simble (‘19), however, disagrees and says, “It’s definitely not how I would choose to spend my time.”
Though at first slime making was all good fun, the problem has gotten out of hand. Somehow the slime made its way into every classroom, distracting students from their regular duties and sticking to their desks and all the germs that reside there. When Dean of Students, Mrs. F., found out about all this, she had no choice but to ban the beloved goo from campus. Now middle schoolers are faced with quite the predicament and, in order to get their daily slime fix, sneak it into school in the depths of their backpacks.
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