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| Superglue (Omegatron via Wikimedia Commons) |
by Peggy Robin
I was attempting to glue back a broken handle when it
happened: The Superglue erupted out of the squeeze-tube and instead of a single
drop settling on the handle as intended, a cascade splashed over my fingertips,
and before I knew what had happened, two of my fingers, formerly separate and
functioning as independent digits on my left hand, were welded together. Tight
-- the tightest, most secure Superglue bond I have ever seen out of all the
attempts in my life to Superglue separate items together. I must have stared at
my hand good 20 seconds in astonishment, giving the bond time to strengthen
further, before galloping off to the sink to try to wash the stuff off with
soap and water. Which, to my complete surprise, accomplished absolutely
nothing. What a hold that stuff has…when it actually works, which it seldom does, in
my experience, when the two separate parts are made of china.
Still, I wasn’t dismayed. This must happen to people all the
time. I’ll just Google the answer…if I can type with one hand, that is. The
very first thing that came up was this:
http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Super-Glue-off-of-Your-Hands-with-Salt.
The Wikihow answer -- make a thick paste out of table salt and water, rub
gently, and repeat as needed. Simple enough. But not good enough. Despite
multiple salt-paste wash and rinse attempts, my fingers remained stuck together as one unit.
Back to Google, and this time I knew better than to pick a
solution based on search ranking The “wiki” method of relying on popular
response to identify the best answer to a question may be fine when you need to
know which boy band is the cutest, but there’s no reason to expect it offer
you the right way to break down a chemical bond. For that you need an expert.
And what better expert than the manufacturer of the substance that produced the
bond? Let the makers of Superglue tell me how to unglue myself. I went back to
the search results to find the hit from the Superglue Corporation and came up
with this: http://www.supergluecorp.com/removingsuperglue.html
-- the fourth one down on the list of search results.
The Superglue Corporation says to use acetone, the main ingredient
in nail polish remover. Easy enough, I figured, until I looked at my bottle of
nail polish remover and with a sinking feeling realized it was one of those
environmentally-friendly/kind-to-your-sensitive-skin types, entirely ACETONE
FREE! Was there any of the old-fashioned hard stuff in the house? After
(one-handedly) combing through some basement shelves and cabinets, I discovered
the three-quarters-evaporated remnants of a bottle sitting in a box of
decades-old dried-out children’s art supplies. It still had that pungent smell.
And when applied to Superglued skin, it worked in an instant. My fingers were
free!
And the take-away lesson learned from this incident? It
could be any of the following choices:
A. Superglue is best used when your goal is to weld your
fingers together; it’s not much use for any other kind of bonding.
B. There’s a value in keeping things like old nail polish
remover; you never know when it may come in handy.
C. Never assume the number one result of a Google search
will yield the right answer.
D. Never try to fix anything; just get new stuff.
An argument may be made for each, but personally, I’m going
with D.
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Still Life With Robin is published on the Cleveland Park
Listserv and on All Life Is Local on Saturdays.
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