The glues of our life

I saw an image of the Lepage glue with the rubber top on Facebook and memories came flooding back. I remember using it as a child. Then I remember all of these glues – Elmer’s Glue, rubber cement and white paste, also by Lepage.

The glue with the rubber top had a slit in the top of the rubber and you would press down to let the glue out, it looked sort of like maple syrup, only thinner. The Elmer’s Glue we would put on our fingers, the white would turn clear as it dried, and then we peel it off. The rubber cement we made into small rubber balls and we played with them. I think we used rubber glue more than most of them other types of glues here.

And the White Paste. What I remember about the white paste is eating it. Yup, we would eat the white paste. I don’t know why and I don’t remember what it tastes like, but that was the thing to do when you were eight years old.

I remember one time in class, I was “tasting” the white paste and I heard a shriek from the teacher – it was a shriek like you would hear when someone sees a mouse. She looked at me and said, “You’re not eating the paste, are you?” And even at eight years old, I was a quick thinker – I told her, “No, I was smelling it.” A stupid answer but I guess I thought it was better to be smelling it than eating it.

I can almost picture the teacher in my head, but she wasn’t our regular teacher, she was either a substitute or a teacher’s aid, something like that. I suppose the regular teacher was used to us eating paste so it was nothing for her to be shocked over.

It’s amazing how seeing something or smelling something brings back so many memories.

I used to see a Facebook page where pictures of old toys and games were posted. There wasn’t any text, someone would just post a picture and the memoires would start flooding back, people would comment about their memories about the toy or game.

I guess my brothers and I were spoiled because I can’t remember seeing an old picture of something that we didn’t have. Every toy and game that was shown we seemed to have – Trouble, Skittle Pool, Clue, Monopoly, Flintstones things, Operation, Lite-Brite, Creepy Crawlers and even the Hasbro Frosty Snowman Machine, and lots of models – we used to make lots of plastic models and do puzzles.

I don’t know what happened to all these things, I guess my mother threw them out, but when I think of what they are worth now.

The interesting part is that my brothers and I must have shared everything no matter whose toy they were because I can’t remember who owned what. We must have kept everything in one place in the house and just picked and chose what we wanted to play with.

Now it’s all about electronics. Kids have so many electronics that one day will probably seem quaint to them.

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