Glue Sticks

If you happen to have a child who eats glue, you’ll be happy to know, your kid might just be onto something. I’ve recently become aware, that apparently glue is a rare and luxurious substance, comparable to caviar.

At least that’s what I have to believe based on the miniscule amount of glue contained in the glue sticks I recently purchased for back-to-school. I sent the requested 8 glue sticks to Kindergarten and kept a few for home use. A week ago I released one from my secret stash, into the eager hands of the girl, age five. A few days later, sweeping the floor, I find (and say) the following: 1) Glue Cap. “Dang it, this glue is going to dry out if you keep leaving the cap off.” 2) Empty Glue Stick. “What did you do?!! Did you screw the whole stick out of this glue? I am NOT giving you any more glue if this is the way you use it!” 3) Nub of the glue stick now approximately ½ inch in length. “Silent Night! What on earth did you do with all the glue? How much stuff did you glue anyway?”

Girl, age 5 finally replies to my rant: “Not a lot, that’s just how much there was.”

Of course I know better than to accept the sorry excuses of a 5-year-old, so I promptly pulled out another glue stick to demonstrate the extent of the glue misuse going on in our home. Here’s what I found:

The purple portion is the glue I removed from a new unused glue stick. 

(Also note the amazing *ahem* quality of a practically new Nikon digital camera)

I am certain that glue sticks used to be fuller than that. I’m not really that worried about the few dollars I spent on glue. But I feel the need to complain about it anyway, for a few reasons.

First, it really annoys me when I feel like some big company thinks they can trick me with a half-full glue stick. Yes, I’m sure somewhere in fine print on the package they indicate the actual ounces (or in this case fractions of ounces). And I’m sure somewhere someone is chortling at how ingenious this is, because, who would ever compare ounces on glue sticks at back to school time?

Second, it seems to me in these times of environmental awareness this company should be focusing its creative efforts on something innovative and earth-friendly, like maybe refillable glue sticks, rather than doubling the output of plastic waste by reducing the amount of glue in each container.

Third, even though this blog celebrates wasting time, I prefer it to be on my terms. It’s bad enough my family has suddenly tripled our milk consumption, requiring emergency “milk-runs”. I don’t need to be going out on unscheduled “glue-runs”.

Am I overreacting? Am I imagining things? Maybe glue sticks always looked like this. Maybe there’s a perfectly good reason for this. Please, tell me if I’m wrong.