I had just started the fourth grade and I was excited about the new year. The fourth grade at my elementary school spelled the ultimate change from being a child to becoming an adult; you started having to wear the “abaya“, you started taking real classes, and you started being treated like an adult.
My favorite addition though was the 2 weekly hours on the day before the weekend called “Activities”, where you had a selection of out-of-curricula classes to choose from. Being an art-aficionado from an early age, I naturally picked art. The teacher was an Egyptian called Ms. Maha, very tall and rather big, with your quite-typical Saudi-school idea of what art is- a lot of tin carving, dry pasta pasting, burlap (kheish) bags, ceramic flowers, and yarn beads. But that was still a lot better than the mosques they had us draw in third grade, and I was excited for the new use of material.
During our first class, she sat us in the basement of the school and told us how we are going to do some gorgeous adult art. Our first project: bedouin-style necklaces made from Pringles can-tops, which we were going to carve with ballpoint pins and then glue colored beads on. Then she pointed to the stack of glue piled up on the table.
Butterflies fluttered in my stomach when I realized that it was adult UHU superglue. The liquid type that my parents would never let me use at home. The liquid type that my dad would glue everything with. And I was finally adult enough to be able to use it.
I proudly stood in line behind my fellow classmates to put my hands on a tube all for myself, and spent the entire two hours carefully exploring the amazingness of UHU superglue, which was actually strong enough to stick the beads to the tin. Ahhh… even now, two decades on, I can clearly recall those hours. I glorified in its sweet caustic smell, which remains to this day one of my favorite scents in the world. I covered my hands with it and peeled it off carefully when it dried, making a mold of my tiny fingers. I learned how to put very small portions of it using hairpins. I glued the most random things ever, trying to test its limits, which seemed endless.
I went home in ecstasy that day, carrying my tube of half-finished UHU superglue proudly to show my mother. I was in love. I was an adult, and it was my savior.
From that day and for the next 10 years, UHU superglue was my best friend. I carried it around wherever I went, and actually kept that habit throughout college too. You never know when the circumstances call for some superglue here and there.
I developed the habit of gluing everything that needs to be fixed, as well as gluing anything I thought would look good somewhere where it wasn’t supposed to be.
I superglued my shoes together, I superglued the phone to my desk so no one would remove it, I superglued the door knobs to make them less slippery to open when my hands were wet, I superglued my dolls to my closets, I superglued my glasses together to make them more tight, I superglued my torn jeans, I superglued papers instead of stapling them, I superglued bookshelves and scraps of fallen paint, I superglued my Barbie-furniture to the dollhouse, I superglued photographs to the door, I superglued my backpack, I superglued the wheels of my bed, I superglued my hands together when I was bored, I even superglued broken furniture.
I remember when my dad was moving our furniture to Jordan, he called me up and told me with amusement that he had discovered that most of my drawer-panels were glued together with superglue. I told him I knew that. He asked me why didn’t I just tell him and he would have nailed them back together. I shrugged and told him that he taught me to love superglue. He shrugged and told me that he had had them fixed at a furniture store properly.
And that, Manal, was my first crush. I still go doe-eyed when I see a tube of brand new UHU superglue.
