Oh, this is going to take some time....
No, no - that is "white glue" or just "glue." Then you had "paste" - which was like chunky white glue with a brush in the lid. Apparently, this was intended as a snack-food, as so many people seem to have eaten the paste. I did not. No one explained to me it was actually a snack-food, cunningly disguised as a school supply so as to evade the detection of teachers. Then you had "rubber cement." It came in an amber (brown) bottle, also with a brush in the lid. I believe the bottle was colored to prevent kids from seeing what the material inside looked like. Had I seen it first, I would have most assuredly NOT have smeared that "disgusting snot-glue" on *my* art projects!! Rubber Cement has the benefit of NOT seeping into paper/cardboard/construction-paper/et al to form a molecular bond between the two surfaces. Instead, thanks to an adhesive property copied from the element mercury, rubber cement sets up in a tacky "sponge" or "booger" on your paper's surface, providing a much more temporary solution for binding art projects together.
It does, however, seem to have taken after mercury in another very important way - it gets EVERYWHERE. When you pull the brush out of the bottle, strands of the adhesive instantly teleport outward a distance of at least five feet. Any and every surface it likely to attract it, but it will most likely be encountered on the *fronts* of the two objects you wanted to fasten together. The next most likely place it will be encountered is on the hands of every child in the room, regardless of whether they were involved in the art project or not, and hanging from the noses of most of the boys. The next most likely place you will encounter it is in the hair of the most hair-vain girl in class. In fact, the amount of rubber cement you are likely to encounter in the girl's hair is directly proportional to how loudly she can squeal.
However, rubber cement is GREAT for making things stick to each other until you want them to come apart - or until you try to give mom the gorgeous present you made in art class today. At that point, the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Zimbabwe will dislodge the piece of construction paper you coated with half a bottle of rubber cement in Texas.
So, my friends, I hope this has served as a better explanation of Rubber Cement!
