Memories of Spokane-Funny Story # 7

Urban legends come in all sizes- this one comes in the size of a box of powder Tide detergent.

Aaron S (I will use his last initial because we also had an Aaron but I can't remember his last initial because we weren't too close, but he lived with Aaron S- so in case the other Aaron comes up in another story we have them separated! ).

Okay- so I was talking to a bunch of people after class one day about random facts. I brought up that I heard that powder Tide glows in the dark. Aaron S confirmed that he heard the same thing. Everyone debated about what must have been in it to make it glow.

So later that day Tara and I were grocery shopping for a Christmas party we were throwing before everyone went on break. We bought a lot of snacks and drinks and a few holiday-esque things to place around the apartment. We also bought, out of mad curiosity,yes, powder Tide.

We eagerly got things ready: brownies, pretzel salad, dips & veggies assorted candies, chips & dip. Then we looked at our shiny new box of tide, actually, it was kind of dusty. So we pulled it out of the Safeway bag and looked down at it as if it were bomb we had to diffuse (only with plenty of time).

Maybe we should just open the box make a thick mixture and go for it. What should we write on the wall.
We searched the recesses of our mind for something good. Then a phrase Aaron S said all the time as a joke came to Tara. " I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU..." She started. I finished, " I don't think you're a Christian!" Aaron said it whenever anyone said or did something pushing the envelope or not "G" rated. It always made everyone laugh as everyone knew he was joking.

So on the front wall of the house when you walk in, Tara and I started writing on the wall with powder Tide mixture. After getting finished with the I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU..." We decided to stop and let it dry to see if it really worked. Yeah, I know- pretty smart- you think we would have tried a very small sample on a piece of newspaper before messing up our walls. Nope- not that smart yet.

So it dried and it turned into something similar you probably made in 5th grade. Remember when you had to do cartography in Social Science- and you had to make a water color map of the US then you had to make that weird mixture of flour and salt and water to make a rough playdough substance to form the mountains in the west.? That what this stuff looked like- but it smelled a LOT better.

This 5th grade substance dried on the wall- now for the ultimate test. We turned of the lights after shining a very powerful flashlight on it. We could barely contain our excitement as we awaited the outcome of our scientific experiment. And when we turned off the lights we realized we were in...complete darkness. "WHAT!!!" We looked at the box as if it were defective. I kicked it like a dead pet to see if it's really dead.

"What should we do now, we have this crap on the wall?" Tara went to get a sponge, a scraper and some warm water. Just as we started our first guest arrived. Oh well.

The whole night everyone who came in asked, "What is that on the wall? What does it say?" So each time we told the story it got shorter as our disappointment in our "experiment" got larger. The party was a success nonetheless. Everyone had a good time and it went well into the night.

Nothing beat what happened the next morning however. No, we didn't find any drunk guests in our closets, but we did have an unexpected lovely stop over from our landlady, Marla. To hear more about Marla you should read Memories from Spokane-Funny Story # 3. She came in and looked at the wall as if she had just witnessed a murder. In squeaky, old lady voice, " Oh dear. Oh my! What in heaven's name is this girls?"

Tara and I tried to play it off as if it was nothing. " Oh, its just a small experiment with Tide. We put it up yesterday and are hoping to take it down today."

She kept asking questions about it to the point of annoyance.

"Why did you put tide on the walls inside the house?" She questioned finally. To which a funny joke popped in my head and it took everything in me to not say it. The joke is, (and you have to say it out loud in order for it to make sense because the eyes alone don't pick it up)Q: Why do Eskimos wash their clothes in tide? A: because it's too told out tide." I did refrain and finally after Tara continued the explanation, Marla finally left, a little upset, but she left. Tara and I washed it off the walls moments after she was gone and there was no trace of anything. The next time Marla came over she looked at the wall as soon as she was in the door and even touched it discretely to see if everything had been taken care of. " I have to hand it to you, it looks like nothing was ever on the wall," she said.

Tara and I looked at each other proudly with a smirk.

There are some people that got it to work - here are a few tips to make your Tide experiment successful:
http://upstagereview.org/CostumesArticles/glow.pdf

And in this one, apparently its liquid Tide that does the trick:
http://www.exo.net/~pauld/activities/fluorescence.html

Well, I guess I learned that you should always check the validity of experiments- but I also learned that Tide on the wall makes a good conversation piece.