But that won’t stop me. In fact, Bow Ties o’ the Day/Tie o’ the Day encouraged me to press on with our post. And I listen to this tie because it allows me to not have to decide between wearing a bow tie or wearing a regular tie. Sometimes a girl just needs to wear both types of neckwear.
How are we going to come up with something to write about? Well, I have a tried-and-true method for figuring out a starting point– whether it’s for a post, a story, or a poem. I grab a dictionary, open it up to a random page, then put my finger on a word. I have to write something about that specific word. That’s my rule.
For this post, the first word I touched was a dirty word, so we’ll bypass that one. The second word I touched– the one we can use– was “mucilage.” I know. Weird. It shares the same word root as “mucus.” And of course it means an adhesive gum or glue, usually made from plants. Yes, it looks and feels like mucus.
I wondered mightily what to say about mucilage, and then I remembered a crafty glue/mucilage concoction called Mod Podge, which I always heard pronounced MODGE Podge. Ah, the 70’s! (It’s still around in craft stores, although it kinda disappeared for a couple of decades. Throwback!)
Mod Podge dried almost completely clear, no matter what you spread it on. It was a mostly transparent glue, but it dried with a matte finish. Aside from brushing completed puzzles with Mod Podge so they wouldn’t fall apart, or cutting out pictures and Mod Podging them to pieces of wood, the main thing I did with Mod Podge is use it to coat rocks I had painted, to protect the paint and to give the rock a matte look.
We were all doing it. We painted our pet rocks. We painted faces on our rocks– like doing their make-up, I suppose. We painted what adults considered hippie words on rocks, like PEACE, LOVE, GROOVY, HARMONY– evil, counterculture words. The size of the rock didn’t matter. Rocks tiny enough you could keep them in your pocket. Rocks bigly enough you could decorate your front porch with them. Rocks you could put in your school locker or on your desk. What were we thinking? But it was a heckuva blast.
So that’s my mucilage story, for what it’s worth. And if you didn’t know Mod Podge before, now you do. And if you didn’t know mucilage before, now you do. If you see the word MUCILAGE and can’t remember what it means, try to see MUCUS. That’ll remind you.
This post makes me think of paper mache in elementary school. When whatever it was we were making was dry, we’d “modge Podge” it then take it home to show the family. I always thought the popping of the balloon inside the masterpiece was the most exciting part of the art.