Breaking the Stress Ball

Summer has been busy. It’s been close to two months since I last blogged and I’ve missed it.

Work, family obligations, and household operations have kept me away from the keyboard. But I’ve been jotting down ideas for blog posts in that time, so hopefully I’ll be able to share them within the next few months.

Today’s blog post is about my experience in breaking a stress ball.

Hubby brought home a stress ball several years ago that had yellow balls inside. The stress ball was covered with a soft gray fabric with a yellow smiley face on it.

I kept it on my desk and periodically squished it, not for stress but to give my fingers a workout. And, let’s be honest, it was just fun to squish over and over and watch the ball squeeze out of the bottom of its gray cover, the little yellow balls inside satisfyingly slipping around each other.

With all of my squishing over the years, the stress ball finally gave out and broke last week.

Little yellow balls spilled into my lap and all over the floor.

Now, I thought these balls were made of solid plastic with some kind of liquid in the ball that helped them move around, but no liquid came out of the ball when it broke.

As I dumped the balls from my lap into a garbage can, I noticed each one felt moist and soft. When I tried to pick up individual balls from the floor, I found it impossible to do because they were slippery. Some of them also disintegrated when I pinched them.

I was forced to sweep them up with a broom and dustpan, though that was also causing some of the yellow balls to burst. It took time to find all the balls because they went everywhere (there are probably a few still on the floor), and I brushed individual ones onto a piece of paper to get them off the floor.

When I took photos of the yellow balls on a piece of paper and in the garbage can, I noticed they were luminous, with light emanating from them in a way that did not suggest they were made of standard plastic.

I’ve been curious about what these balls are made from since breaking the stress ball, so before I began writing this post, I looked it up.

Well, folks, apparently I’ve been living in a paper bag because there’s all kinds of information online about these balls, including craft projects(!). How have I never heard of Orbeez before? That’s one of the brand names for these squishy little balls that are made of a polymer that allows them to expand in water.

According to Wikipedia, this is the material used in superabsorbent diapers and menstrual pads. Well, at least I was familiar with that from seeing tiny white balls while changing very wet baby diapers. I just didn’t realize they were commercially available for people to use for craft projects, keeping soil moist, and making their own stress balls. They also come in multiple colors.

According to this thorough article on TheRoundup.org, What Are Orbeez Made Of & Are They Biodegradable?, the polymer used to make Orbeez and similar products decomposes very slowly, so they will eventually biodegrade, which is better than regular plastics. I suppose the balls that were disintegrating on me were in the process of decomposing.

So, there you have it. If you’ve ever wondered, like I did, what the plastic-like balls inside a stress ball were made of, now you know.

If a stress ball ever breaks on you, be prepared to gently sweep up these little polymer balls from every nook and cranny. Squeezing them like you squeezed the stress ball won’t work. (I feel like I’m *this close* to a life metaphor, here.)