Super Elastic Bubble Plastic

“Allison, you can’t tell anyone or we’ll be in big trouble.”

“They’ll know anyway as soon as they look at me.”

“No they won’t! You don’t look any different.”

“Yes I do! I won’t be able to face my parents. They’ll disown me!”

“Look, your clothes are fine, there’s nothing on them. Just hide them in the wash and aunt Ruth won't ever know ... unless you tell her.”

“I’ll never tell! God, why did we do that? It’s a bad thing. I never thought we were bad.”

“We’re not bad! We’re cousins, you’re thirteen and I’m fourteen and we’re not bad.”

“God, if our moms find out we’ll never see one another again. We’ve always played together. God I wish we hadn’t done that.”

“Well, me too really. It wasn’t smart. When they find out it could cause problems. I wiped everything off so we didn’t leave fingerprints or anything.”

“Promise me well never do anything like this again ... Peter ... Promise me!”

“Okay, Okay, well never do it again. Now let’s head to your place for dinner or they’ll come looking and find out.”

“Here, get rid of these. What if we drop them off the bridge?”

“Good idea ... there, they’re gone and ...”

“No! Oh god, the straw floated away but the tube is still there and the water’s not deep and you can still see it!”

“When do you think they’ll find the lock with that plastic bubble stuff in it?”

“Tomorrow when they try to open the shed. Maybe someone saw us?”

“Nobody saw. It’ll be gone by then. What’s for dinner? Did your mom say?”

“No, meatloaf, I think.”

“Good, I love her meatloaf. Race you there?”

“No. You always win.”

“I’ll let you win.”

“It’s not fun if you let me.”

“Come on, we always ...”


Authors Note: (Not in word count.) I was advised to explain.
The story is true, it was my cousin and me in 1957. She and I had been close since babyhood. Our mothers always said, “You can’t slip a dollar bill between them.” We were good kids, we’d never done anything destructive or hurting. We‘D been using that old goopy stuff you could squeeze onto a straw and blow bubbles that hardened into a soft plastic. I made the title one of the brands. It came time for dinner and I do not remember why we decided to squeeze what we had left into that lock on the tool shed on our way home. Dropping it off the bridge is true and that tube lay there for a couple months until a storm washed away our fear of getting caught, but not the guilt. It was a fun memory.

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