Of strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff - Always Pack a Runcible Spoon

January 06, 2005

Of strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff

As is not uncommon, there wasn't a huge amount of overseas travel in my childhood. Australia can be an expensive place to leave, and our island status means that trips abroad are officially a Big Deal.

As a result, many of my very earliest 'exotic' travel associations are not really about moving from A to B at all.

Instead, they are thoughts and feelings - wonder, a lust for the new and the unusual, and a kind of rapturous, envious awe - that were formed in the playground of a little primary school in Sydney.

It is in the playground that I first remember finding out that there was such a place as Bali - and that in this place, people sold a wonderful substance that smellt like glue and which could be used to form solid bubbles that would not pop.

Whatever this stuff was (and believe me, it smellt completely noxious - nearly 20 years on, I can still smell it!), it was a clear, glue-like substance that formed transparent, flexible bubbles with an oily rainbow sheen on their surface. Clearly in the solvent family, it was sold in little metal tubes, just like acrylic paints or toothpaste, but in miniature. It was clearly marketed at kids, and it was the height of fashion in 1980s Australia to return to school, post-Bali holiday, with one of these tubes of bubble-making stuff.

The best part was, it was all over the schoolyard that this stuff was (shssh...!) illegal! We spent hours wondering over the fact that this thing was available in Bali ... but banned in Australia. Um-ah!

The idea that there was doubtless a very good reason why it was banned at home didn't really worry us. It was just cool when someone showed up at school with it nonchalantly stowed in his or her pencil-case.

Also high on my childhood list of Wonderful Things That Are Overseas was the rumour that circulated when I was in Year 5 that someone's dad had gone on a business trip to Singapore and found - wait for it - Chocolate Minties! Were they really still Minties if they were chocolate-flavoured? - this connundrum was diverting for the better part of a year.

Also amazing were tales of parents bringing back orange- or strawberry- or bubble-gum-flavoured toothpastes for their kids. Oh my God! The thought of toothpaste being made so odd and so exciting was almost more than my little heart could bear. I prayed that I would one day get to sample this stuff - or at least to see the box it came in.

So began my very first associations with travel and the exotic. And the funny thing is, I can still see flickers of this stuff in the kinds of things that fascinate me today.

Am I the only person who remembers the bubble stuff? Did you have similar things in your childhood mind that seemed unbearably cool and exciting and so ineffably 'Overseas'? Please share!

Posted by Tiffany on January 6, 2005 10:49 PM
Category: Travel thoughts and whimsy

Comments

I am from the Philippines and we still have the flavored toothpaste. We also have that stuff that you were talking about in Bali except we call it "plastic balloon". I think the reason its illegal is because well, the smell can make you high. You put it on the edge of a plastic stick and blow out the little blob. Where I come from anything from America was considered "exotic" it seemed that everyone had a relative from there who was always sending back boxes full of stuff that smelled so...clean and fresh and sort of snowy. You went crazy for Keds and Gap and anything that came from the US was considered "designer". I suppose you could call it "Reverse Exoticism" because I guess people from over there would consider us exotic.

Posted by: kix on January 7, 2005 11:39 AM

Hey kix,
Thank you for confirming the existence of the Toxic BubbleMaker! Also, I love your description of the 'America smell' that wafted out of the boxes of stuff sent back from there :)
I think the USA represents the height of childhood exoticism for many of us non-North-Americans!
Nick Hornby has a fantastic chapter in his book '31 Songs' (also called 'Songbook' in some countries) where he mentions how cool he thought the US was when he was growing up - primarily because he met an American kid who could a) turn his eyelids inside out; and who b) had all the coolest toys ... When Hornby finally got to go to the States as a kid, he points out that all he was interested in doing all day was watching TV and eating weird snacks - because anything else would have been utter cultural overload :)

Posted by: Tiffany on January 7, 2005 09:50 PM

When I was a kid, vacationing meant piling into the family car and visiting relatives or camping--I don't think I even stayed at a hotel till I was 18. Not exactly an exotic childhood. Your post brought back strong memories of the hot item in my elementary school playground: kids who went to Mexico all came back with these special matches that were, yes, ILLEGAL in the US. To this day, I don't know why--were they extra flammable somehow? I remember secret huddles at school in which matches got lit, and a kid named Andrew bragging about how he'd smuggled the matchbox onto the plane in his shoe! It was pretty much a boy thing, but it left me with a feeling that Mexico, unlike home, was wild and lawless and exciting and dangerous. I've never before considered that such a small thing was the start of my wanderlust, what an interesting idea.

Posted by: Rose on January 8, 2005 01:29 AM

Oh my God - I think we had a little taste of that lawless-match thing when we were in Mexico! The ones we had were super-flammable and you had the feeling that they might just spontaneously light up anytime, any place. I got so scared that I had to trade them in for an actual lighter in Turkey ... the stress got too much!!

Posted by: Tiffany on January 10, 2005 07:57 PM

Hello, I remember the toxic stuff was called, (ready for this?) Super Elastic Bubble Plastic. It was the rage for a while in the mid 70's.

Great blog, very well written. I'm going to India this year and appreciate you sharing your experiences.

Best wishes, be safe and have fun.

Posted by: Midcape on January 16, 2005 04:06 PM

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