It started like any regular Saturday. Coffee brewing. Laundry humming. And me, on my knees, fishing under a shelf for a rogue LEGO (yes, I still step on them — and yes, it still hurts like betrayal).
That’s when I saw it.
Tucked deep in the shadows, behind dust bunnies that probably have generational trauma, was a lump. Lumpy. Sticky. Kind of… crunchy-looking. Naturally, I assumed: dead mouse. Because of course.
But when I poked it with the end of a pencil (standard operating procedure), it didn’t move. No tail. No twitch. Just a strange plasticky scent that triggered something deep in my brain.
And suddenly, I knew.
It was Floam.
Old. Forgotten. And still very much here.
Not in a container. Not even remotely the right color anymore (hello, “rotting apricot”). But unmistakable — with those tiny foam spheres still hanging on for dear life, like loyal sidekicks from a forgotten comic book.
It felt like I’d tripped over a portal to my childhood. Like some secret time capsule had cracked open under my feet — and instead of treasure maps or notes to future-me, it was a blob of neon goo from 1999, quietly waiting for someone to remember.
My kid stared at it and asked, “Why is it crunchy?”
Honestly, fair question.
But I saw more.
I saw glitter glue explosions on the carpet. Saturday morning cartoons with cereal milk stains. Plastic dinosaurs with “custom saddles” made of Floam and dreams. I saw a time when imagination wasn’t filtered through screens — it was sticky, loud, and everywhere.
And yeah, I almost called pest control before I figured it out.
There was a mound of brick dust next to it. I fully convinced myself a creature had laid some sort of bead-covered egg under our shelf.
But then it hit me — that warm wave of weird joy.
The kind only triggered by things that once mattered so much, then got lost beneath growing up.
Should you keep Old Floam?
Absolutely not. It’s now 50% dust, 40% mildew, and 10% pure chaos. But I held onto it for an hour. Showed it to my partner like I’d unearthed a relic. He blinked and said, “Please tell me you’re not putting that in the display case.”
I wasn’t. Probably.
But that moment — that crunchy, dusty, mold-scented moment — was my secret little time machine. A reminder that joy used to come in weird textures and neon colors. That childhood was loud, messy, and entirely uncurated.
And somehow, I think that’s the part I miss most.