Getting a Handle on Sticky Situations

There are so many things people associate with kids that it’s hard to pick the most representative thing. Noise, messiness, innocence, helplessness, recklessness – they would all work. But I’m here to submit to you the most representative thing of children is: stickiness.

It’s perhaps more subtle than the noise they make, but the stickiness of kids has a way of infiltrating any environment kids regularly inhabit. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been walking through the tiled hallway and said, “why is the floor sticky?”

It’s such a pervasive problem that I’ve spent time thinking about the different kinds of stickiness and also trying to calculate the level of stickiness of various substances. In order to be scientific about this, I needed a standard metric so I invented one: the coefficient of stickiness.

To calculate, simply run a bare foot or bare hand over the surface where the substance was spilled and multiply the number of seconds you’re stuck by the number of times you want to curse out loud. The higher the coefficient stickiness, the worse the experience.

Combining this, very scientific and mathematically accurate, calculation with a multitude of observations and my experience with various sticky substances, I’ve determined the worst items and substances to have in a house full of kids.

If you’ve read this column with any regularity you likely know one food that has to be on the top of my list. As I’ve said before, I think s’mores were invented to torture parents and can’t think of a worse food to put in kids’ hands prior to those hands sharing a tent with me. Am I being extra harsh on them due to my extreme bias toward s’mores? Don’t care. (Coefficient of stickiness: 613)

Having just come out of the Christmas season candy canes are fresh on my mind. And on everything else in our house. The ubiquity of candy canes in December combined with the portability of these peppermint sticks makes them a special stickiness problem. Perhaps if they had a handle or the wrapper wasn’t such a pain for kids to take off things would be different, but as it is they are an all 10 fingers covering stickiness nightmare. (Coefficient of stickiness: 30)

Chewed gum presents an obvious stickiness problem and that’s the only thing it has going for it. It’s not sneaky and the stickiness can be reduced or eliminated by catching the gum in pre-chewed form. But my goodness, chewed gum in hair or on the carpet is a nightmare. This one hits a range as the experienced can vary widely. Stepping on gum in the driveway when it’s 40 degrees outside and you’re wearing shoes (Coefficient of stickiness: 10). Sitting in gum on the seat of your car when it’s 102 degrees and you’re wearing church pants (Coefficient of stickiness: 150).

Then there’s apple juice. This is the dark horse in the stickiness competition. You don’t realize it because it masquerades as an appropriately liquid substance in the juice container, but spilled apple juice is like a rodent sticky trap when it dries. Probably 8 out of 10 times the answer to my query of why the floor is sticky in that hallway is that a kid dripped apple juice from a sippy cup. It’s worse than you think because it will lightly glaze the surface of any sock, shoe, or barefoot that lands in it and quickly get spread around the house and yet remain invisible. (Coefficient of stickiness: 100)

Suckers, cotton candy, snow cones, and glazed donuts all have the propensity to coat fingers and spread as well. None of them are quick as stealthy as apple juice and none of their coefficients of stickiness exceed 70. Well, unless red snow cone syrup gets spilled on the center console of your truck in August. That’s a solid 140. Although perhaps some of the choice words that supplied the calculation for the coefficient was directed at the snow cone place that gave you seven snow cones without lids…at a drive thru…in the summer.

Anyway, the final substance that lands high on the coefficient of stickiness list is pancake syrup. It’s got the near invisibility of apple juice but with a more viscous consistency that lends itself to a more durable and far reaching spread. The finger food nature of kids eating pancakes makes syrup an even more problematic sticky substance (Coefficient of stickiness: 110). And has led to its being banned for use by anyone under the age of 10 in our house. It’s powdered sugar for them (Coefficient of stickiness: 2).

And, just in case you’re wondering. Yes, the coefficient of stickiness for s’mores is higher than all these combined.