A mysterious ooze

A few weeks ago they handed out these cool stress balls at work. I don't have much job-related stress (it's pretty cushy) but I do have busy hands, so this was a much-appreciated little toy—even with the company logo on it. It had a cool green rubber skin, not unlike those semi-translucent iPod cover things. The only unfortunate thing is the ball had a white residue all over it that reeked of industrial plastics, and when I attempted to wash it off the ball became tacky like the Wacky Walkers of my youth. So I could pick up crumbs with it now, which is nice.

I have a fairly destructive tendency with tactile things that normally is kept just in check. For instance, I spent a few solid hours trying to pop the thing, as it was certainly too stretchy for its own good, but just when I got to the point where it might actually rupture I would let up. Because I wouldn't want to be without it or the ability to torture it.

One time, though, I reined myself in too late, and the next thing I know I've got this goop on my hand. This mysterious ooze. The motherfucker was mortally wounded and bleeding on me.

(On the way home I called A. to let her know there was a strong possibility I would mutate overnight. I advised her to buy a shotgun. But I was hopeful I would survive and be able to harness my mutation into a kind of superpower. As in, I would show up in stressful environments, have everyone grab a handful of me and squeeze for a few minutes, then move on when everything was chill. Who wouldn't like that? Beside me.)

Needless to say I was a little disappointed to not have this little stress ball to push around anymore, especially since I never did mutate. Lucky me though, I was walking around the office one afternoon looking for free food and I saw a table with extra stress balls on it. Same green rubber, same white powder, presumably the same clear interior ooze.

I wasn't going to kill this one off so easily. I treated it pretty well, kneading and bullying it every day for about a week and a half. But then I started to pick at the little plug on the bottom, and it was all downhill. I must commend the manufacturer because there were a lot of safeties in place to prevent someone from accessing the ooze this way—many thin layers that I had to breach in spite of myself. Eventually I had a slow leak going, which put a damper on its supposed de-stressing abilities but kept me focused nonetheless. I could still twist the thing around with minimal discharge, so long as I was smart about it. Smart.

On Thursday of last week I settled on letting the thing destroy itself. I twisted the ball into two distinct sections—one half ready to blow and the other with a lot of slack—and leaned it against my computer so it looked like a mushroom (slack half a nice dark green on top, catastrophe-in-waiting half stretched to near-translucency underneath). No change as of Friday, but it had a nice long weekend to develop. (By the way, I know this is pathetic like a retarded fourth-grader and his science-fair potato is pathetic, but give me a break. The alternative was to go shopping for a fun hat for Friday's "Fun Hat Day," and nothing good was coming out of that. At least I was adding a new level of de-stressing to this thing: full-on distraction.)

Got in yesterday and noticed a slow leak had formed. Like when Ash went berserk in Alien, that first drip of android fluid on his temple? Look out!

At last, a nice puddle of ooze greeted me this morning. I couldn't be happier, and not just because we're allowed to wear jeans all week. I was sad to throw the corpse in the trash, but at least I have my ooze-puddle to carry on its memory. There's an air bubble right in the middle and the whole thing is gradually solidifying, and I will cultivate it until I can pull it off the desk like a pancake. I will try to roll it up into Son of Stress Ball. Then I will make it scream.