Let’s go Tulie Toobin’

Inspired by what she had seen at a teachers’ conference on experiential learning during college, Tulie went to a fabric store and bought five yards of tie-dyed Lycra (a stretchy fabric generically known as spandex and invented by DuPont in Waynesboro, Va.). She sewed one short end to the other and created what her family called a “Tulie Toob.”

Its most popular use was on a beach, where sun-addled sisters, brothers, cousins and aunts would climb in, run at the elastic fabric, bounce gently, express aggression in a socially acceptable way, and giggle.

Tulie’s first Toob, the red-and-yellow one above, was judged a successful seaside distraction but a little too loose in circumference to induce the desired level of giddy anarchy. The successor Toob, blue-and-yellow, was made from four yards of elastic fabric instead of five.