For the Kids

In honor of the first week of school last week, I have a lesson today for the kids out there. What, no kids read this blog? Hmm. Well, any immature adults? OK, you'll do just as well.

Today's lesson: Things that don't mix.

First we have oil and water. This is called immiscibility. Can you say immiscibility? No, I can't either. If you're actually interested in reading about immiscibility, you'll have to go here. I don't do chemistry.

What else doesn't mix?

Let's see, there's peanut butter and tuna fish. Haven't tried those together on a sandwich, and don't plan to.

There's paint and hair. Paint doesn't come out of hair easily.

There's gum and hair. Gum comes out of hair with peanut butter, but then you need to get the peanut butter out of your hair.

There's also Silly Putty and hair. Silly putty is quite a cool little invention created by a General Electric engineer during World War II, when the US needed to come up with a synthetic rubber compound. The boric acid/silicone oil combination didn't work for its intended purpose, but made a nifty toy! And it has some other uses, which is why Hubby keeps an egg of it on his desk. I can't remember what he uses it for, but it's there, and it's tempting to little boys like Hutton. He's often getting into his Daddy's Silly Putty, and I'm always telling him to please put it back and not play with things on Daddy's desk.

So, this morning as I was showering, I heard Hutton getting upset in the other room, crying and calling for me. Showers are short around here. I got out and called Hutton into the bathroom, where he was holding his head and saying something was stuck.

Now, kids, can you guess what Hutton had stuck in his hair? Did you say Silly Putty? Great job! You're right!

I looked at the mess in front of me and started tugging at putty, while holding Hutton's hair at the roots so as not to pull it all out. This didn't work very well, so I got the biggest chunk of putty out (along with a lot of hair) and told Hutton to hold tight while I went to find Silly Putty removal options on the computer.

I googled "Silly Putty and Hair" and clicked on the first likely website. I scrolled to the bottom of the comments and found that hand sanitizer and Pam cooking spray were two recommended options. I knew we didn't have any Pam in the house, and I didn't have any hand sanitizer handy, but I did have some hand sanitizing moisturizer on my desk, so I grabbed that and squirted a glop into Hutton's hair. Didn't do too much. I read further: alcohol was another option. I took Hutton back to the bathroom, doused the back of his head in rubbing alcohol, and grabbed Hubby's comb. It did the trick, plus now Hubby's comb is all sanitized! Great!

Now, look at the picture below and tell me what you think it is:

If you said, "Something your cat left on your doorstop!" then, I'm sorry, but you're wrong. (Though it does look like something a cat might have hacked up.) The correct answer is, of course, "Silly Putty and hair!" Silly Putty and hair do not mix, as I hope you've learned from this little lesson. I hope that Hutton has learned this lesson, too, though he had to learn it the hard way.


As I combed his hair, I told him over and over, "This wasn't a very good idea. Please don't ever put Silly Putty or anything else sticky in your hair!" We'll see how his listening comprehension is.

We're going to be working on some different bald spot covering hairstyles for a while. Unfortunately, the two cowlicks on the back of Hutton's head don't cooperate with many hairstyles.