By Sydney Flaherty
EMS Press
Traverse City East MS
1st Place
Division MS, News Writing
Feature Columnist
One of the newest things to sweep not only EMS hallways but the world are squishies. If you don’t know what a squishy is, don’t worry I was in the same boat just a few weeks ago when I stumbled upon a bin at Target on Black Friday surrounded by kids with recess street-cred dreams. My first thought was basically the inevitable: Isn’t it just a memory foam mattress shaped like a pancake?
Indeed it was.
Let me interrupt for a minute to explain the situation. By the time you read this it’s probably around quarter three. I, on the other hand, am currently writing it at the beginning of quarter two (we’re talking fresh off the break right now) so writer me is hoping that squishies stay popular but normal me is hoping that we forget this trend ever happened by next week.
If you guys are ever so blessed to have the Squishies be even more of a trend, oh well. Might as well talk about them. If they are no longer a trend, well, you can look back at this article with hope for the future. Anyways back to the story!
Over summer, most of us (sorry, but some of us are living in the past) know that the Slime fad died out and, to take its place, was a foam ice cream cone. What an age we live in! I’ll admit squeezing that ice cream cone may not have felt like the most practical way to spend my afternoon but it definitely did feel surprisingly satisfying, which is all we really care about , right?
Can we also just talk about why all of the squishies are food-related? Okay, I know that there are squishies that aren’t food but like, are they really squishies if they’re not shaped like food?
That’s something to think about right there. Next, I’ve noticed they’re all pretty sugary foods. Is this just some sort of pent-up anger we get out by squishing the same food Pinterest tells us not to eat? I tell you, America’s love-hate relationship with sugar is now impacting youth’s daily lives.
So anyways after considering the food/sugar/strangeness of the product, it was finally my time to try a squishy. It feels like you’re squishing something (whoa, big surprise). Honestly, I used to do this with the dodgeballs in gym class in elementary school and I loved it but now that it’s a thing, I was kind of reluctant to do it again. Is it supposed to be like some sort of dry version of slime?
I don’t really see the wow factor. Despite this, students still find themselves playing with squishies all day instead of listening to teachers during class.
As we conclude this story I hope you take one thing out of it: we shouldn’t have squishies. Instead we should be paying attention in class and learning what we should really spend our money on. But I mean it’s middle school so does it really matter? That deep thought was brought to you by Said by Sydney. Make sure to tune in for our next article! (and this is Sydney fulfilling her dreams of being a radio personality).