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identifiably non-food-like. There's something implicit in the Play-Doh Smell that says, "You know, bud, you're not supposed to eat me." Upon further sniffage, however, there's also nothing that says "Nibble on me, and your children will be born with four opposable thumbs." Kids being what they are, that's a green light to drop a ball down the gullet.
    Whereupon the big surprise of Play-Doh: It's salty. As an adult, you have to wonder why salt is an ingredient in the stuff. Surely sodium chloride is not being used in its role as a preservative here; hardy sea adventurers did not venture away from sight of land with only Play-Doh and hardtack to sustain them all those months until   they discovered the Pacific Ocean. I think the salt is there specifically to keep kids from eating an entire can of the stuff. Kids will eat anything, but they prefer that anything to be sweet. Salty obsessions come in those teen years. Then kids wolf down Doritos and Sour Cream and Onion chips, which are essentially salt licks for adolescents.
    But I've come to praise Play-Doh, not to eat it. Play-Doh is not the only non-toxic creative tool around, after all. If one wished, one could arrange Crayolas into a delightful fan pattern, set a bowl of ranch dressing at the base, and then happily munch away (after the skins had been removed, of course) while watching football or "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." No, Play-Doh has other qualities besides the gustatory. Number one among them is the fact that it's meant to be played with.
    Crayons color and paints paint. But Play-Doh is meant to be squished and squooshed and, if you're up to it, made into something else. You can't squish and squoosh your crayons, at least not without the use of a heating element, like an oven or an open flame. And of course that's a big no-no. Now, everyone once and a while a kid will make his or her finger paints into a facial mud pack. But it's not usually intended expressly as such (it's just what it turns out to be). Crayons and paints and markers are conduits; the flow of activity goes through them. They are the means, not the ends.
    Now take Play-Doh. I mean that literally -- you pick it up, and make a tight little fist and let it ooze through your fingers. Kids spend hours just poking it and squashing it, making little balls of the stuff and then slamming them into thin primary color pancakes (and then eating them). It's tactility with a purpose; once you realize you can do just about anything with Play-Doh, you start thinking about what you can make with Play-Doh. 
    What a moment! God made Adam from the dust of the Earth, a sort of primordial Play-Doh, if you will, although it came in only one color (muddy brown). When little Bobby or Susie sets down to make that first Play-Doh person, it's a moment that recapitulates that first Divine Inspiration. Let's hope Bobby and Susie's Play-Doh planet is a happier and more peaceful than the one we've got. One suspects that God's modeling substance had more than one toxic substance in it; it would explain a lot about people. If God had made Adam out of Play-Doh, I don't know that we'd be better, but I do know this: When we'd sweat, we'd smell like vanilla.
    The makers of Play-D oh have come out with a lot of different Play-Doh Fun Toys, in which you press the Play-Doh into pre-existing forms or ooze them through holes to make "hair" or whatever. I don't much like these. Some of these playsets are simply ill-advised; the fellow who thought up the Play-Doh McDonaldland Playshop has forgotten that to a kid, a non-toxic modeling substance turned into a McDonald's fry is now actually a fry, ready to be consumed (it's already got salt!). 
    More to the point, it's limiting to the Play-Doh. Play-Doh was meant for finer stuff than to be extruded into fries or hair. It's meant to be played with as is: A lump of not-clay, not-dough lying in the hand of a kid, its possibilities limited only by the imagination of the child. And by the