I have never met a single soul who despises or dislikes bubble wrap; even the most serious, stoic adult will get a gleeful smirk on his or her face when presented with a fresh strip of unpopped packing material to play with.

I know some Marines who used to sneak naps at work while resting on bales of bubble wrap, blissfully dreaming away their troubles on a bed of full of bubbles. Who wouldn’t want that?

Maybe we could even achieve world peace if we could give everyone a little strip of bubble wrap of their own and a few moments alone to sit on the ground methodically popping the stuff.

It’s one thing that unites all of humanity: the deep urge to snap those little cells of air, again and again and again…

I know that when I chance upon stray bubble wrap I tend to zone out into some kind of bubble popping reverie, a strange look on my face, similar to the one my cat Smokey gets when he’s purring and relentlessly kneading a fuzzy blanket. It’s magical, soothing.

Thank you, Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes of New Jersey, for inventing this mesmerizing material for us back in the 1950s.