So, for those who don’t already know, I have two awesome boys. Tanner is 8 and Max is 3. Today, Tanner and I decided to try making our own bubblegum. Before I launch into this afternoon’s saga, I need to tell you that I have already attempted (well, fumbled) this in the past. I actually TAUGHT a segment on bubble gum making one day at Tanner’s school. (It was a volunteer thing and the teacher they had planned to teach it had canceled at the last minute). What the heck! Sure, I can’t bake a cake, or bake anything but brownies, but I’m sure I can make bubblegum if you give me written directions. Of course, I’ll wing it in front of the 2nd and third graders. Anyway, I had 1 teacher helper and 3 other parents who were supposed to be in assist mode, which turned into “Michelle’s never done this before so let’s form a team” approach, and I’d say about 10% of our effort was successful. Only one group of 4 students actually ended up with gum they could chew without making a terrible face upon impact to the tongue. Even though each batch tasted really, really bad, they all wanted their plastic little baggies of gum to take home. Maybe they took it home and used it as a sort of gorilla glue for various home projects….This reminds me of a story for another day. My experience as a field trip driver when Tanner was a kindergartner. He still talks about it to this day…..
Oops, back to the topic at hand. So, I had LOTS of the ingredients left over from last year, and we decided we should give it a go again. How hard could it be? The answer is….harder than last time because now I was doing it without any other adult supervision. So my first mistake was overheating the glue (I mean gum base) in the microwave. I was remembering the first batch we made at school –I did not microwave it long enough and the gum base stuck to all the utensils we were using and became so sticky so fast it was basically rendered unusable. So much so, a crowbar would not remove it from the mixing bowl I’d brought and the one male volunteer parent on my team permanently scratched my corningware trying to scrape it out and clean it for the next batch of kids coming in to try the recipe. So, today’s batch was way too hot as it came out of the microwave and we couldn’t kneed it and it got really, really sticky as it cooled off. Then, after 15 minutes of kneading, Tanner and I had a taste. YUCK! NO FLAVOR! So we added some watermelon flavoring to the bubble gum flavor we had already added. I told Tanner to add 5 more drops, so he poured half the mini flavoring bottle into the ball of dough. It became a really bright pink color, which leeched onto our fingers and hands as we continued to knead the dough. After all, the more you knead it, the better the gum is supposed to be. So we took a taste again. YUCK! Some horrible bitter taste (too much flavoring!) had taken over the gum–I had to quickly find a trash can for mine and Tanner was close behind. This is when we noticed our hands and fingers were now completely stained bright pink with the flavoring. It took three types of hand soaps to find one that would take some of the stuff off, and Tanner went to bed with pink hands. Anyway, I am going to take the extra ingredients back to the school for the next sap who wants to try their hand at teaching bubble gum making in the spring. There are some things that are easier to buy rather than make on your own and I guess gum is one of them. But our experiment was more about spending time together doing something fun rather than actual gum quality, and Tanner was prompt in telling his father all about the flavorless gum we made when he got home from work.
Now what does all this have to do with great photography? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing, but I thought sharing some random thoughts might be fun. Enjoy tomorrow!
