Playdough

Ah playdough. Such a simple... toy? Has become so much more complicated since I was a kid. Now, it's not enough to use the container it comes in to roll it out, and use cookie cutters to cut them into shapes. Now you've gotta have these huge elaborate things that take hours to put together, hours to take apart, hours to clean up, and they never really come clean, do they? Because they're full of cracks, and where ever there is a crack, playdough will find it. It's playdough's desperate attempt to escape the sticky, spitty, jelly-covered, hands of two year olds that will knead all the colors together until a vibrant pink becomes "brown?" Not brown, mind you, but "brown?" Not entirely sure what color it becomes.

I remember playdough tasting great when I was a kid. Home made playdough, that is. We'd have edible playdough occasionally, and it tasted just like
cookies!

Typing that out, I don't think it was playdough... it probably... was cookie dough...

But when they make playdough in all these colors now! Pink, orange, purple, blue, all the colors you had as a kid, PLUS the special packs with special colors for the special toys!

The toys I'm talking about... Well, one turns playdough into something that looks like ice cream, and the other turns playdough into something that looks like cake. The illusion is a lot more effective if the playdough actually LOOKS like ice cream and cake though. Thus, we have funfetti playdough. The playdough that inspired me to make funfetti cake. And mint chocolate chip playdough.

Seeing this all typed out, it's started to make sense to me. That is, I'm starting to understand why situations like the following happen every single day we bring out the playdough in preschool.

"What's in your mouth! N! Did you eat playdough?" I shouted. I really don't mean to shout, but I get startled sometimes. Besides, the class is so loud, all you can hear is shouting.

N grimaced at me and spread his lips open in the most pained expression. The kind of expression that can only come from expecting to eat a mouth full of cookie dough and you end up with a mouth full of dry, salty dough, mixed with jelly and... what's that? It's probably spit.

"No..." he said, his teeth full of orange and green goop.

I guess there's a reason playdough is edible.