Is This You? Navigating the sticky world of glue

I break stuff. Some things are beyond repair. Like a drinking glass that slips out my hand, lands on the edge of the kitchen counter then makes a break for it to get to the floor and scatter shards of shrapnel from the kitchen sink all the way across to the refrigerator leaving a minefield for me to traverse barefooted, while trying to get to the broom and answering his all but funny question being hollered at me from the other room, “Hey, ya drop your watch in there?”

There are a few things I break that can be repaired with glue. I come from a long line of glue repair people. But, and isn’t there always a “but” here? But, I use the regular glue. You know. White. Comes in a plastic bottle. Has a cow on the front of that smooth cool bottle. I use that glue for everything. Cups, picture frames, and a little ceramic moose I have. He tipped over and lost an antler. He sits on his rear end and looks like he has a snoot full of Moosehead beer. Getting kinda sticky here ...

For the most part over many years of use, that white glue has done its part in keeping Trina and all her stuff in one piece. Then along came super glue. Instant super glue. Wood glue. Epoxy. Expanding glue. Sanding glue. Latex glue. Non-latex glue. Glue for glass. Glue for metal. Glue for porous stuff. Glue for non-porous stuff. Have you seen the glue aisle in a store? There must be hundreds of kinds of glue. I bet you could find a glue that will glue water to ice. If you ever needed to glue water to ice.

I am a glue-by-the-seat-of-my-pants glue user. I have found time and again some things I glue don’t glue well. I tried gluing a pair of sunglasses once. They were really cool looking sunglasses and when they got crunched in the door of the car I felt bad because they cost five bucks. So I got out my go-to glue. Well, it didn’t work. I tried twice to glue them. Even covered them with tape to hold them in place until my glue dried. Very attractive. And I waited a good hour or so. Well, OK, so I waited about 20 minutes. I have patience. I can watch paint dry with the best of them — but waiting for glue? I’m not so good in that waiting room. The glasses didn’t glue with my all in one glue. They got sticky and grimy from my hands, but they were still in two pieces. So I asked my other half for assistance.

I know he has a nearly unlimited supply of glues he uses. He has more than a few of those hundreds of types of glues. I could never understand why anyone needed more than a bottle of white glue. But with all his supply I knew he could fix the sunglasses of my five-dollar dreams. I was super glue sure of that! The answer was a resounding no. “Can’t glue plastic,” he reports. I said he needed to check his supply again. He has brown glue, white glue, red glue, clear glue, thick glue, thin glue. Glue in glass bottles, tubes, even a needlelike apparatus. But nothing to glue plastic five dollar sunglasses that were by then a white gluey mess.

I don’t understand the glue world. Why can’t you just take two things, any two things, and put a drop or a glob or a layer of glue on one or both pieces, shove ’em together hold them for a minute, or in my case like 22 seconds, and bingo, two broken things become one unbroken thing. If I were queen that’s how it would be.

But, alas, I’m not queen. So I made it a mission to learn of the world of glue. I took down his supply of glues and began to read the tubes and cartons and all manner of packages. This is what I learned: Glue is stupid!

Therefore next time I break something I will attempt my white glue — once. If that doesn’t work it isn’t meant to be fixed. Kind of like that saying about if you love something set it free if it comes back to you it’s meant to be. Well, if after one try to fix anything with regular glue, if it still breaks, it’s meant to be tossed in the garbage and never to be thought of again.

Stupid glue!

Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Her book ITY BITS is on Kindle. Share with her at itybytrina@yahoo.com.