The Rise of Slime

This is NOT slime, this is The Lorax.

According to a quote on the opening page of my computer's browser, someone I never heard of named Thomas Henry Huxley once said, "Try to learn something about everything and everything about something." Finding that to be sound advice and taking it to heart immediately, I found out that Huxley was an English biologist working during the 1800s who advanced Darwin's Theory of Evolution to the point that he earned the nickname of "Darwin's Bulldog." But enough about him. What I really want to know is this: What is slime and why is it so popular?

A friend of mine had posted a picture on Facebook of her granddaughter with some of the stuff, saying they had a great time making slime together. Not having grandchildren myself and so being out of the loop, I was clueless about slime. Yes, I saw Ghostbusters, but I doubted anyone would spend time trying to replicate that goopy stuff that shoots out of a ghost, or that they even could without a ghost on hand.

I found scores of recipes and several tutorial videos on how to make slime but nothing explaining why one would and what to do with it beyond "have fun with it." There were cautions about getting burned by the borax, a major ingredient. This led me to research borax, which I vaguely thought was a character from Dr. Seuss. But actually borax, also known as sodium borate, sodium tetraborate, or disodium tetraborate, is an important boron compound, a mineral, and a salt of boric acid. Turns out the character from Dr. Seuss is the Lorax, who speaks for the trees somehow.

Anyway, back to slime, you can add glitter and food coloring to it and even make edible slime using natural ingredients like blueberry yogurt. Still, I don't know why it's any fun.