– Time For A Tiara: Column by Ginna Young – - Who knew that stuff broke?

This past Easter, I got my friend’s little boy four different colors of sparkly slime, coming in cute, bunnyshaped containers. Naturally, the green was his favorite, since he is OBSESSED with anything John Deere. However, the blue made it apparent that it was going to bump off green as the favorite. The reason for that? It “melts” so much better. See, when you dump out the slime, it holds the shape it was in for about 5 seconds, then begins to kind of melt down. Well, blue acts like it’s in a race, practically flattening on the table in a few moments and this delighted little Warren. He declared that the blue was exclusively his and left me with the aforementioned green, who was deemed second best, as well as pink and purple. Since Easter, we’ve only played with the slime a couple times, because while it’s fun, there’s only so much that can be done with the squishy substance. Unlike Play-Doh, you can’t make fun shapes with it, build anything or create something like a pizza. It’s still fun to squish around, though, so we were happily playing with the slime, when an incident occurred. I don’t remember how it came about, but Warren smarted off a little and I smarted right back. I grabbed the blue slime, which had just come out of the container and told him to go get it. Then, I acted like I was throwing it across the room, while keeping it in my hand. Only, it didn’t go as planned. Half the slime snapped in two and whipped about a foot away, spraying bits around the immediate area. Warren took it well, though. OK, I’m lying. He had a meltdown. Whhhhhhyyyy did you doooooo thaaaat?! Whhhhy would you throoooowww it?! You broke iiiiiitt!!! Now, it’s all in piiiiieeces!!! I tried to tell him it wasn’t deliberate, that I didn’t even actually throw it, but through his tears and hysterics, he kept shooting me looks that let me know he thinks I’m nothing but a murderer. He picked up every tiny piece that exploded and mushed everything back together. For being murdered, the slime melded back together and you could never even tell that it had a slight...accident. Still, Warren wouldn’t let me touch it again, even though I apologized over and over, and tried to convince him I didn’t do it on purpose. He kept side-eyeing me, like I was going to try destroy his beloved blue slime yet again, right under his very nose. I guess he didn’t care a bit about the other three colors, because he let me keep playing with those.