Primary school glue stick adventures

I probably wasn’t the goody-two-shoes kid in school, but I had a lot of kids pick on me too, so maybe it was fair.

Though I only really remember a couple of things I did that probably made me a bit of a naughty kid. Both things have to do with glue…

Glue sticks were annoying to carry, back in school. People often forgot their glue sticks and if the teachers weren’t mad, they would happily offer you a pot of this cheap, weird, porridge-like Clag glue which came in a pot where the lid had a brush attached to it, and you would dip it in the pot to get some glue. I think it’s called Clag paste now?

HOLY COW DOES ANYONE REMEMBER CLAG?
HOLY COW DOES ANYONE REMEMBER CLAG?

Because of the porridge-like texture, people thought you could eat these. Or they looked edible.

Based on that fact, all glue must be OK to eat, right?

One common brand of glue stick was DATS, a cheap two-dollar store brand. The glue was not very sticky at all and you had to really massage the glue stick onto a piece of paper before it actually got sticky. Otherwise, you could rub it on your hands or even pull bits off it without making a mess. It was kinda dry, and smelled like soap.

It lacked stickiness, but it was rather stretchy and malleable. I got bored one time and I rolled a piece of it into a ball in my hands.

Someone at school asked me what I was holding and I joked that it was a ball of candy, before revealing that it was in fact a ball of glue. Our class was seated in table groups at the time, and the seven other people at my desk wanted to touch this little ball of glue.

Soon enough, we had to use glue for an activity we were doing, and not everyone had a glue stick. One boy at my table asked to borrow mine, but before I retaliated, he said, ‘I will pay you ten cents’. Ten cents?! For a kid, that was like a fortune. I accepted the money and let him use my glue.

A little later on, one boy asked the same question but admitted he had no money and would pay me back the next day. I would not accept that though.

I said, ‘Only if you eat this.’

I held up the little ball of glue.

The other kids at my table were laughing and they egged him on to eat it, even though he kept saying he wasn’t going to. Eventually he did put it in his mouth and roll it around a bit before just swallowing it, opening his mouth and lifting his tongue to show us that he did indeed swallow it.

I think I was probably a hero to the other kids, because they thought it was really funny.

Comments on this post

I wonder what happened to that kid, haha!

I loved getting the PVA glue out at school. We’d all sit there and paint our fingers in it so we could peal it off once it was dry. So strange.

OMG I REMEMBER PVA GLUE.

I was going to write a whole post about how we used to lather our hands in it and peel it off when dry. But your comment alone takes the cake. XD

UGH! Glue in general…the bain of my existence as a student, and now, a teacher. Now, I have 8th graders who won’t know how to close them properly, resulting in me either 1) having a fit or 2) throwing out dollar store gluesticks only to have to buy more. Lame. Any who, that’s pretty hardcore that you convinced that boy to eat a ball of glue!

I was the same as you in elementary school; right in the middle between being the jerk and being the kid who always get picked on XD. I’ve never seen any glue that had a brush attached to it before. All we had were glue sticks where the liquid comes from the top by squeezing the bottle. I would probably have all sorts of fun with the brush glue!

I’ve always heard stories of kids eating glue! If this happened when I was a kid, I would call you a hero too XD. I guess this is why they come out with non-toxic glue! Same goes with crayons too ;). You got a story about convincing a kid to eat a crayon too? XD

We had those squeezy glue sticks too! I hated those because they usually made a mess and I squeezed too much out. :( Sad times, hahaha.

Surprisingly I have never convinced someone to eat a crayon, nor have I witnessed it. I have heard all sorts of stories about that, though. I remember that a boy in my kindergarten class licked the tips of his coloured pencils before colouring, and claimed that the colour came out nicer. My friends and I fell for it, I don’t know if it was a joke but I think it actually worked? Haha.