I decided to explain the whole "Gloop" thing. This blog is, after all, called "Tales from the Gloop" so it is only fair that I say, for the record, what the heck I'm talking about.
It started with a dream. No, actually, it started with a 1960s cartoon called the Herculoids. Actually, no, it started with a pillow.
A few years ago these new microbead pillows came on the market. The first were called Moshis and could only be found at Bed Bath and Beyond. You probably have seen them in the store, or seen people carrying them on airplanes. Today they come in all kinds of different shapes and things, but back then you could only get this basic little blobby thing. Well my brother and I both really liked our Moshi pillows because they were very snuggly and, because they made out of Lycra, you could bend them in all sorts of positions.
Well, in a car ride back home from the store, I realized that the pillows sort of looked like those little blobby guys Gloop and Gleep from the old cartoon the Herculoids.
For those of you who haven't seen the show, here's the title sequence that can give you some idea of what I'm talking about
There was also an episode of SeaLab 2021 that prominently featured Gloop.
Anyway, because there came to be so many brands of these microbead pillows (Moshis, Mooshmellows, Fooms, etc.) we decided for the sake of convenience to just call them all Gloops. After a while, "Gloop" came to mean what we did when we snuggled with our Gloops. Then "Glooping" came to mean any time we acted liked Gloops (i.e. lumpy and squishy). Then I started to call my cousins Gloops, because little kids are pretty gloopy. Then my family started to call me a Gloop. And then, then my friends, it grew out of control. I started to use "gloopy" as the Smurfs use "smurfy," as one of those universal words that negates all others. I honestly believe, really and truly, that because of Gloops my vocabulary has suffered significantly, but I'm not going to worry about it.
Now, I must put this into broader context. Growing up, particularly since my brother was born, my mom has used her own made up words. For her, Shtagey (Sht-ah-gee) meant something nice and happy, Dimbly meant much the same, a Figgity Bah was a mean person, and Shnuggly meant that you were snuggling in a particularly shtagey way. It never really struck me as particularly odd that a grown woman would frequently use made up words or that my family just accepted the use of them without question. Needless to say, after Gloop came along, it didn't take much time for it to pretty much replace all of my mom's words.
Anyway, so there you have it. My mom is nuts and so am I, I suppose. But really, am I so nuts? I really think this whole idea of glooping is something wonderful and good and that it should be shared with everyone. Really, I just think that too few of us put enough importance on just lying under the covers with a stuffed animal and a loved one and just being happy. It is something that is really endemic to our society. We are always moving, always going, always doing. Too infrequently do we just savor the joys of doing absolutely nothing, of glooping to our heart's content. Maybe I am obsessed with snuggling. But you know, at least I'm happy doing it.
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