We need to discuss slime. Even as I type the word, I can see moms everywhere rolling their eyes and recoiling with barely-contained disgust. For those of you who don’t know, making slime is currently all the rage among school-aged kids. Speaking of rage, moms with kids between the ages of six and twelve know exactly what I’m talking about. Slime is having a moment, and I, for one, am done with it.
The warning signs that slime is taking over your life:
- You catch your child furtively watching YouTube slime videos with a glazed look in her eyes.
This is where it starts. Your kid will obsessively watch YouTube videos about how to make slime. Trust me when I say, there are millions of these videos. Chattering eight-year-olds with YouTube channels babble on enthusiastically about the various concoctions and ingredients. Shaving cream, baking soda, contact lens solution, and glue are whipped together into fluffy mounds of shiny slime. There’s fluffy slime, crunchy slime, glitter slime, butter slime, and edible slime. Slime-making is pop-culture science for dummies.
- Your child suddenly has an insatiable appetite for glue.
Your weekends become consumed with multiple trips to Hobby Lobby and the grocery store to buy gallon-sized jugs of glue and other supplies. Yes, they now sell gallon-sized glue jugs. Forget about milk, you need glue. I could have taken my family on an all-inclusive trip to the Bahamas on what we have spent on glue in the last four months. Elmer’s, you’re welcome.
- Your household items inexplicably begin to disappear.
Mysteriously, shaving cream and contact lens solution from your bathroom vanish. This causes feelings of maternal and paternal annoyance to begin bubbling to the surface.
- You encounter messes that make your head explode.
Once all the ingredients have been bought (and pilfered), mixing and stirring commences. The above-mentioned YouTubers narrate the process. Soon, baking soda coats the kitchen floor like a fresh blanket of powdery snow. Food coloring flies through the air, landing with reckless abandon. Mixing bowls and spoons are covered in thick, gelatinous goo. Globs of slime dot the floor and your child’s clothing in all colors of the rainbow. Half-empty boxes of baking soda and bottles of contact lens solution litter the area like a hazardous waste dump.
It’s a magical mess of epic proportions. We’ll discuss clean-up later.
- You no longer have any Tupperware to call your own.
If your child is lucky enough to find the holy grail of sufficiently fluffy slime, she must store it somewhere. Naturally, she uses your Tupperware, until you are forced to pick up extra containers on your frequent glue-runs to the grocery store. This only happens after several times of trying to find a place to store dinner leftovers and finding the cupboard is bare. Again, this causes a primal feeling of swirling rage in your belly.
- Your house gradually begins to fall apart at the seams, just like your sanity.
Slime begins to migrate to unusual areas of the house, leaving a gooey trail of incriminating evidence. For instance, you might find it under your child’s bed, where it has left a large, dark gray stain on the carpet. It could be embedded in your favorite rug, or adding a pop of color to your living room couch.
You might find it on the ceiling, my personal favorite. When you climb up on the ladder to peel it off the ceiling, and the paint peels off with it, don’t be surprised when you begin to run around the house completely unhinged, screaming obscenities and grounding your child for the rest of her life.
- Cleaning up slime becomes another one of your many mommy talents.
Sure, your kids can “help” clean up, but a seven-year-old’s clean-up job on gooey, gluey, gelatinous messes leaves something to be desired. Even her best work is not up to par. You will scrub spoons, floors, and Tupperware. You will peel and scrape slime from all manner of surfaces. You will sweep until you weep.
You will do all of this, until you realize that the best option is to move the whole slime operation outside, in close proximity to the water hose.
Hopefully, you will recognize these seven warning signs and stop the slime-making machine before it…well…slimes you. I have high hopes that slime-making will soon be in our rearview mirror and will be one of those fads that we look back on with a smile and a laugh. Without a doubt, children bring their own special brand of slimy, messy magic to the world.
