I can always count on my co-workers to be debating the important issues of the day and this Monday morning is no different. Today’s big topic of discussion is: What is the common name for the crud that collects in the corners of your eyes while you are sleeping?
As you can imagine, the relevance of this to day-to-day PC and UNIX technical support is practically nil, but that hasn’t stopped my cube-mate from taking on the arduous task of compiling answers to the question. So far we’ve collected seven different answers to the question and they are as follows: Sleep, Crust, Sleepy Bugs, Eye Gunk, Eye Boogers, Eye Lint, and Gooey Stuff. The vote totals stand at 4 for sleep and 1 apiece for all the other answers. As it turns out there isn’t any official scientific name for this mystery material. Scientists apparently feel there are more important issues to tackle despite the obvious need to establish a common name so as to avoid confusion when telling someone they’ve got an eyeful of crud to clean up. So, in an attempt at having one more post no one will actually respond to, I’m curious what everyone else refers to that mystery material as? Myself, I’ve always known it to be referred to as “sleep” as in: Wipe the sleep out of your eyes.
Posted on 11/18/2002 at 08:37 AM 
Did you eat a lot of paste in school?
Personally I have always heard it called sleep. Perhaps a more clinical term would be better? In which case I vote for discharge. *wrinkles nose and grins* Sounds so gross.