I don’t remember the first time I was allowed to chew gum. It’s one of those milestones in life that nobody bothers to record. Your mother might write down when you finally said a real word, or managed to tie your own shoes, but there’s never any mention of the gum-chewing accomplishment. And that’s a mystery, because it takes some skill, as well as intelligence and concentration, to keep chomping away at something and avoid swallowing it.
So how do we make the transition? On Thursday we’re too young to chew gum, because there’s a danger that we might choke, and on Friday everyone’s okay with it. Maybe the big people just stop paying attention. Or maybe there’s some traumatic event going on, or it’s game seven of the World Series, and it goes unnoticed that you have twelve sticks of Juicy Fruit in your mouth.
We were never permitted to chew gum in school — in class or out on the playground, and certainly never in church. I was once almost nabbed by a priest, who asked if I was chewing gum in the confession booth, a violation that would have seemed unthinkable if I hadn’t actually been doing it. Chewing gum in God’s home was a sign of disrespect bordering on blasphemy. You might as well have taken one of those new-fangled magic markers and drawn fake eyeglasses on the statue of Saint Anthony. So, I lied.
“No, Father,” I answered, “I don’t even like it,” while deftly tucking the forbidden Fruit Stripe gum into a far corner of my mouth. I had learned this trick from an older boy, who was sure that sooner or later it would help me stay out of serious trouble. It seemed to work, but then it also created a sizable dilemma, because I immediately knew that lying to the priest was a much bigger sin. There was no commandment that said, Thou shalt not chew gum, although you’d have thought otherwise, judging by the way everyone tended to react to it. In fact, when the Old Testament was written, gum didn’t exist yet. I suppose Moses could have slipped it in anyway, if he’d wanted to, but it would’ve just confused everybody even more, kind of like our third-grade response to Thou shalt not commit adultery. None of us had any idea what the word meant, but that didn’t stop us from pretending that we did. Here’s the definition a classmate and I concocted sometime in 1964:
“It means you shouldn’t act like an adult before you are one, because you end up doing things you aren’t supposed to do, and that’s called adultery.”
According to historians, it was the ancient Greeks who invented chewing gum, which they called mastiche. This hideous resin, exuded from the bark of the mastic tree, was also used to make varnish. I can’t imagine what that tasted like, but I also wonder if it had some toxic chemical ingredient that entered the bloodstream and made its way to the brain, causing an altered mental state. This may explain why the Greeks spent so much of their lives lounging around, sitting on boulders and watching plays outdoors during lightning storms, or looking for hidden pictures in the night sky, or asking if a goat really existed.
There wasn’t much to do in those days, and people were always searching for something to chew on, just to help them stay awake during chariot races and barbarian invasions. Over the centuries, they discovered many suitable substances, but it was still mostly tree sap and beeswax.
Then around 1860, someone figured out that they could make money selling flavored gum, and an industry was born. By the time I paid my first visit to a candy store, bubble gum was being sold two-for-a-penny and wrapped in waxy comic strips that looked as though they’d been drawn underwater. There were also bubble gum cigars, sacks of chewable gold nuggets, and gum hidden inside lollipops. And, of course, gumball machines were everywhere, like short tax collectors waiting to drain our pockets of pennies and nickels. The flavor of gum lasted about ninety seconds, and so we required more and more of the stuff to maintain the desired effect.
I don’t know if it was the actual gum the nuns objected to, or the way we chewed it. More than one teacher described the sight as similar to watching cows eat. Not one of us had ever been outside the Bronx, and so our familiarity with farm animals of any type was limited. No doubt we’d all seen cows on television, but had somehow failed to notice how they chewed. Anyway, the nuns confiscated our gum on a regular basis, along with candy, baseball cards, comic books, slingshots, and pea-shooters. Those items, and others, were usually stashed deep inside our desks. Hardened gum could be found adhered to the bottom of every chair and table in the school. Most terrifying, though, was getting caught actively chewing in class and being summoned to the front of the room. We would have to remove the gum, still warm and sticky, and place it into the nun’s outstretched hand, even as we withered under her scorching glare. All of the sisters had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but it was still hard to comprehend how they didn’t draw the line at wet chewing gum.
My earliest encounter with bubble gum probably involved the brittle, pink, wafer-thin slab included in packs of trading cards. Opening the pack and slipping the gum into the mouth was a smooth and automatic motion that served to enhance the discovery of a Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford baseball card, which I guess was something like the experience the ancient Greeks had when they calculated the area of a circle, or when they contemplated the essence of reality, all while popping in a fresh piece of bark.
I eventually graduated to sticks of gum, individually wrapped in packs of five. Sometimes I would unwrap and remove one. Then I’d refold the rectangle of aluminum foil, pressing it flat with my fingernail to make it look new and unopened. I’d slide the foil back into the paper sleeve, then offer it to an unsuspecting family member. I can’t tell you how many times I pulled this trick on parents, aunts, uncles, and my older brothers, and they never seemed to catch on. Always, they would open the empty wrapper and be completely surprised that there was no gum inside. It was pretty funny for the first few hundred times, but after a while I began to worry that maybe my family wasn’t very smart.
Would Plato or Socrates have fallen for such nonsense? Did the early Greeks even play tricks? Or were they too busy inventing geometry and trying to figure out how to eat artichokes? Did they blow bubbles with mastiche, and if so, did it get stuck in their beards? Did they ever leave the gum in their pocket on laundry day, or find some in a jacket they hadn’t worn since last spring? Did they have trouble throwing away a chewed piece because it wouldn’t come off their fingers?
I mostly wonder where it all began. Who was the first person to chew gum? Those ancient people were careful about preserving historic events. They could recount epic battles and long voyages. They could explain how to find the third side of a right triangle, and the very meaning of life. But no one bothered to remember that first mastiche chewer, just as no one ever claimed to be that person. Was his mother proud of his accomplishment? Did anyone even recognize this important milestone? Whoever he was, he changed the world. Maybe he was in school at the time, or out on the playground. More likely, he was praying in the Temple of Zeus, and had the gum tucked into a far corner of his mouth. At least that’s what I prefer to believe.
greenroomgallery
August 12, 2012
Dear Charles, thank you for providing me with some serious entertainment. I was wondering what you would come up with next and you nailed it with bubble gum. I have similar bubble gum memories without the catholic ingredients and now I have something to chew on for the rest of the day. Loved it! 😀
Ps. Don’t know if this is age but I don’t chew gum now it just makes me hungry.
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bronxboy55
August 13, 2012
Charlotte, I’ve read that gum does make you hungry — it fools your stomach into thinking there’s real food on the way.
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greenroomgallery
August 14, 2012
yep, makes perfect sense 🙂
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charlywalker
August 13, 2012
It’s not age..it’s the Aspartame they add to the gum……
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greenroomgallery
August 14, 2012
See…….I blame age habitually without even considering aspartame which I’d forgotten all about and aspartame is anything but real food so that makes sense too 🙂
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Val
August 12, 2012
I was introduced to chewing gum when I was a small child. My mother used to love Wrigley’s spearmint – the kind that came in strips in a packet – like the ones whose foil you smoothed out and put back into their outer wrappers to fool your family, but she didn’t trust me not to swallow the gum, so she’d let me get so far and only so far the make me spit it out. The day that I decided that I could chew and keep chewing, was great! But I didn’t discover bubble gum for quite a few years and then of course I experienced the usual embarrasment of having the bubble plastered to my face (I suspect more people have expired from bubble gum suffocation than swallowing the stuff!)
Actually, I used chewing gum to make my first friend after I left school – it was an icebreaker to be able to offer someone a stick of gum. 🙂
Thanks for the post, Charles. Brought back some memories for me too!
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bronxboy55
August 13, 2012
You’re probably right, Val: there’s a training period that includes spitting out the gum. I guess I don’t remember that part. I do remember learning how to blow bubbles, though, and have often wondered if I’d be able to explain to someone how to do that.
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buckwheatsrisk
August 12, 2012
wow it sounds like Catholic school was crazy strict and no fun allowed??
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bronxboy55
August 13, 2012
No, we had fun. But with fifty or more students in a class and one nun in charge of them, the fun had to be kept to a manageable level.
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buckwheatsrisk
August 13, 2012
ohhh okay that’s good…almost sounds like a joke, “you take 50 kids and one nun, and what do you get…”
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Elyse
August 12, 2012
I must have started really young. I still slept in my crib, which I did until I was about 3, because there wasn’t room in the room I shared with my two sisters for a third bed. I remember my mother clearly telling me to spit out my gum before I went to bed; I also remember that I wondered what would happen if I didn’t. The next day my mother wept as she cut my long ringlets off — my baby curls — along with the pillowcase to which my head was magically attached. I haven’t slept with gum in my mouth since, showing that I do learn lessons well.
You always ask the unusual questions that no one else thinks to ask. Thanks!
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bronxboy55
August 13, 2012
Your description of your mother weeping as she cut your hair created a vivid picture in my mind, like a Norman Rockwell painting. It’s one of those magical moments that could have gone unnoticed, and might have been forgotten forever, but you’ve prevented that. I wonder if you’ve told your son the story.
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Elyse
August 13, 2012
I can’t see my mom doing that in my imagination, but I can still feel it. Ouch!
And I’m not sure if I told my son about it. We didn’t let him chew gun for the longest time. Not because I lost my first curls to it (they grew back), but because I once had an office mate who chewed gum in the most annoying manner ever. I couldn’t tolerate it for about 20 years. I have either relaxed about such things or lost all my senses.
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Michelle Gillies
August 12, 2012
I love your definition of ‘adultery’. It makes perfect sense.
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Jennie Upside Down
August 12, 2012
Yes, I was a little foggy on the definition myself.
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bronxboy55
August 13, 2012
I guess it does, Michelle. I still wish I could remember how the nuns tried to explain it to us back then, because someone must have asked.
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Margie
August 12, 2012
I always liked bubble gum the best – blowing bubbles were a good way to occupy the time when you were stuck out in left field waiting for someone to actually hit a ball that far.
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bronxboy55
August 14, 2012
Sometime in the early 1980s, they came out with a shredded bubble gum that was packaged like chewing tobacco. I’m pretty sure it’s still around.
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Carol Deminski
August 12, 2012
Okay, I hope everybody got the great word pun in your title since when a cow chews stuff, it’s ruminating and when we obsess on a thought, yep, also rumination. Great job with that. 🙂
Also, I’m consistently impressed with how you bring completely disparate subjects to bear on one another. Ancient Greeks and Mickey Mantle trading cards both connected by gum. This is pure genius.
Of course, if you have any Greek friends (I do!) they will always tell you how this or that “began with the Greeks” and I think the Greeks were pretty sneaky coming up with all the stuff that basically formed Western civilization. I guess based on that, it’s really no surprise that the Greeks will claim they invented gum…but at least they cannot claim they invented baseball. Nope, that’s ours free and clear.
Thanks again for a great post,
Carol
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bronxboy55
August 14, 2012
Actually, I found most sources give credit to an American named Thomas Adams for inventing something that we would think at least resembled modern chewing gum. But it seems that his contribution was more on the manufacturing and marketing side. Adams opened the first chewing gum factory, and was the first to sell gum in a vending machine.
Thanks for the kind words, Carol.
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mimitabby
August 12, 2012
As a mother, i can tell you that some kids learn not to swallow it after a few tries, and others take a year or two. But it really doesn’t hurt the kid to swallow their gum! It just means they want more because what I gave them was gone.
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bronxboy55
August 15, 2012
The myth, I think, was that it takes seven years to digest chewing gum. And I suppose after swallowing it, you had to wait an hour before you could go swimming.
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Patti Kuche
August 12, 2012
As teenagers in boarding school we chewed gum to hide the cigarette smoke! By then the nuns were getting younger, we were becoming bolder and nuns were leaving the orders. As you so well say, the heady temptations of forbidden Juicy Fruit!
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bronxboy55
August 15, 2012
I’m sure you didn’t really fool the nuns, Patti. They always seemed to know what we were going to do, even before we did.
I hope you’re enjoying life in NY.
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Nancy DiFinizio
August 12, 2012
The nuns in Brooklyn made us take it out of the mouth and wear it on the tip of our nose for the rest of the day. I enjoyed the post.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Now that you mention it, Nancy, that does sound familiar. I think at least one of our nuns made us do the same. Thanks for the reminder.
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morristownmemos by Ronnie Hammer
August 12, 2012
I remember a teacher telling us to picture a lovely young lady, well dressed, hair neatly combed, beautiful posture. she is walking through an art gallery, and as she strolls along she is chomping and cracking gum. This last image ruined everything good that came before.
Gum chewing always had a negative connotation.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I guess it was hard to understand the negative impression we made by our own gum chewing, Ronnie. Yes, everyone else looked ridiculous, but not us.
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dearrosie
August 13, 2012
You ask the best questions. I’ve never stopped to think when I first ate gum. I loved blowing bubbles with a big wad of Wicks pink bubblegum that cost one penny. I was lucky I never got it stuck in my hair…
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I’ve never heard of Wicks gum, Rosie. We had Bazooka and Dubble Bubble.
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Joseph Nebus
August 13, 2012
I don’t know when I was first allowed to chew gum. I don’t remember being specifically banned by my parents, although it wasn’t permitted at school or church or so. On the other hand, my parents didn’t buy gum, so they could pretty well block it out anytime outside Halloween, when there’d be at least a few sticks collected.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Gum was so cheap back then, Joseph — until you factored in the dental work it led to.
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SmallHouseBigGarden
August 13, 2012
it was common knowledge in my neighborhood that if a girl chewed gum she was viewed as a putana….and if she snapped it while chewing…..LOOK OUT!!!!! open invitation, according to the nuns!
(and ridiculously, I BELIEVED them!!!!)
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
There’s no way the nuns used that word. Did they?
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SmallHouseBigGarden
August 24, 2012
No,No! 🙂 I paraphrase!!!
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feelingchipper
August 13, 2012
Not sure when my first chew was, but I definitely remember the “gum hair”.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I never had gum hair, but I had gum face many times.
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Chris Gulotta Minch
August 13, 2012
Aunt Jackie taught me how to make all kinds of things by folding all of the colored gum wrappers in the Nanuet house! They looked like the letter Z hooked together!
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I’ve always said she was the talented one in the family.
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Ashley
August 13, 2012
I too loved your definition of “adultery”. I remember back when I was a child in church, my Mom would always offer me a stick of Juicy Fruit mid-sermon. Perhaps she was sharing a Cookoo’s Nest moment with me in the hopes of quieting a fidgety child. To this day, I crave Juicy Fruit gum during church services – even though I gave up sugary gums years ago. Oh, and as an ex-smoker, gum has been a lifesaver…literally.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I’m really glad to hear you traded in your cigarettes for gum, Ashley. That was a smart decision.
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charlywalker
August 13, 2012
Chewing I can handle….it’s the incessant POPPING that drives me batty….
If the nuns at our school caught you with gum, you had to stick it on your nose for the day….they thought chewing was a nasty HABIT…
Not to mention the mosaic patterns of gooey bumps tacked under the desk…
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
As with chewing itself, when we’re the ones doing the popping, it’s cool. When others do it, that’s just annoying.
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Sue
August 13, 2012
Thanks for the laugh Charles. This post reminded me of my first job back in high school. It was at the snack bar at the local ice skating rink. The biggest seller was a purple chicklet gum called Thrills. I could never understand the fascination because the gum smelled like soap.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I don’t remember Thrills gum, Sue. I wonder if it’s still around.
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Sue
August 25, 2012
I was surprised when you said you didn’t remember Thrills gum as I am not much older than you…so I googled it and found that it was strictly a Canadian gum. You learn something new every day.
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vbholmes
August 13, 2012
A slave who groveled at the feet of the advertising industry, I was a Dentyne fan myself: “Cleans your teeth while it cleans your breath”–an on-the-go solution to all my oral hygiene needs. Of course, the utimate promise of satisfaction came from Doublemint: “Double your pleasure, double your fun….” What more could one ask?
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I remember those Doublemint commercials, with the twins enjoying an amazing life because of the gum they chewed. If only it really were that easy.
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zoetic * epics
August 13, 2012
WOW! How you are able to make the topic of chewing gum interesting, entertaining and funny proves your talent!
I use to fall for that “fake gum” trick all the time! I’m still learning.
P.S. I use to chew gum ALL the time. Then I read some interesting facts from some studies
#1 – chewing gum may make you hungrier, because the motions of chewing is correlated to eating, but nothing i s going to your stomach, so it confuses your stomach and brain. I stopped chewing gum, but I don’t think my appetite ever changed! 😉
#2 – chewing gum is suppose to help increase memory! I chewed like crazy during my exams. Sometimes I got great grades, sometimes it’s shameful. And my memory still sucks, I can’t remember anything past a year!
So I’ve given up on gum as a miracle drug. Chew on!
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
I think gum chewing is one of those things that you can condemn or condone, and find plenty of evidence for either view.
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zoetic * epics
August 24, 2012
Why hello! I’m neutral about the gum chewing topic. 🙂 But all for it if someone has naturally bad breathe. Oh! And I have been eating A LOT of dessert since this post of yours! 😉
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susielindau
August 13, 2012
I used to chew gum, but now all I have to do is think about it and my saliva glands start working overtime!
When our kids were little, we had a huge gumball machine. We were in the toy and school supply business. After several years, one half of the millions of gumballs remaining in the machine had dried out and became jaw breakers. I forgot all about it. I wonder if it is still in the basement? Does that say something about our basement? Yah!
I went to Catholic school and could imagine your story! How have we survived all the guilt????
Great story!
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
You should try to find that gumball machine, Susie. It might be worth a lot. I bet there are people who collect them.
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She's a Maineiac
August 13, 2012
Yeah, exactly how does one pinpoint the moment a child is able to chew gum? I never let my daughter have any for fear of choking and then suddenly, BAM! it’s ok now?
I laughed at your little empty wrapper trick. So sneaky and clever. I remember my brothers doing the same thing to me and I would fall for it every time too.
We were obsessed with gum. Big surprise there. Especially the kind that made the biggest bubbles. It was all about the bubbles. Then after it popped, you’d have the problem of trying to get it out of your hair. My brother once had to cut a chunk out of his hair because the mayo and peanut butter we tried didn’t work (my parents were not home for this fiasco)
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Mayonnaise? Really? I think I’d rather have gum in my hair.
And I’m pretty sure no one was taken in by my empty gum wrapper trick. I just assumed they were, because my brothers had fooled me with it so many times.
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frances
August 13, 2012
When the nuns, or any teacher really, caught us with the devil gum…..we had to stick it on the tip of our nose and sit in the corner at the front of the class……..as a result, I have avoided all forms of gum since the age of 10!
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Did the nuns really call it the devil gum?
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frances
August 24, 2012
To be quite honest…….I don’t really remember if they did or if I have gone too far with artistic license in the numerous re-tellings of the story…..most people refuse to believe the putting the gum on the end of our noses part, you are the first to call me on the devil gum bit!
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marymtf
August 14, 2012
‘Does your chewing gum lose it’s flavour on the bedpost overnight?’
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Nancy DiFinizio
August 14, 2012
Wasn’t that a great time in the world when that was a hit record? No lyrics about violence, or drugs, or sex, or beating your girl? Nice trip down memory lane, as usual.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
That lyric also reminded me of Violet Beauregarde from the original Willy Wonka movie. She’d been chewing the same piece of gum for months.
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Andrea Kelly
August 14, 2012
My first two memories of chewing gum are:
Swallowing it, because I was too young to chew it but my sister gave me Juicy Fruit anyways,
and getting it stuck in my hair and having my mom trying to shampoo it out with mayonnaise before having to cut it…
Yet I still became an avid chewer later in life. Never thought about the guy to “invent” it, but cheers to him, wherever he is!!
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Another mayonnaise memory. I’d never heard of that remedy before.
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Andrea Kelly
August 24, 2012
I guess it doesn’t work very well, since I still needed a haircut! 🙂
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shoreacres
August 14, 2012
Long before there was chewing gum in the New World, the Karankawa tribe on the Texas coast chewed the tar that came ashore from natural seeps on the ocean floor. Note to people really freaked out by tar balls: they’re natural, and they aren’t going to kill you if you get some on your feet. (Of course, the Karankawa were a touch cannibalistic, too, so maybe they’re not the best models for how to deal with the natural world.)
Back in the 20th century, I once had the pleasure of standing on a study hall stage for a half hour with gum on my nose. I forgot to get rid of it after lunch, and paid the price. That was public school, too – it wasn’t just the nuns who were agin’ it. And of course there were the shoeboxes of wrappers from Beechnut gum, saved for one reason or another for American Bandstand. Prizes? Premiums? I can’t remember.
I haven ‘t chewed gum in 30 years. I finally stopped, because I couldn’t keep from swallowing it. Once the flavor was gone, so was the gum. I figured it wasn’t doing me any harm, but it couldn’t do me any good, so I just stopped.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
Linda, I just visited a shipbuilding museum and learned that many of the craftsmen chewed pine pitch while they worked. I guess you can get used to almost anything.
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Stacie Chadwick
August 15, 2012
My son threw two containers of Altoids into his backpack today. He’s never come close to ingesting an Altoid, so I looked at him with an expression of confusion. “No gum allowed at school, Mom,” he responded, as he and his future minty fresh breath walked out the door toward the the cute girl he met the day before on the bus.
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bronxboy55
August 24, 2012
The word Altoid sounds medicinal to me. Still, it’s probably a safe alternative to the extremely intense chewing gum they sell these days — the kind that promises to melt your brain.
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Yulia
August 15, 2012
Reading this post make me miss my childhood time 🙂 I love gum… I will make a ballon with it haha.. Gum also good for mouth exercise 😀 that’s what my friend told me… it’s been ages since the last time I had gum. Thank you for posting this Charles 😀
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
Thanks, Yulia. I wonder if you’ve had any gum since you left this comment.
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Yulia
August 27, 2012
I only can have it when I am in Indonesia.. I have never had it here in Singapore 😀
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Bruce
August 15, 2012
I really like the confessional cartoon and as for blowing bubbles with your bubble gum, well; I guess that was a kid skill to be shown off. Not a good look though when, trying to blow a bubble, you accidently spit the whole wad out and it lands in the dirt. A great read. Bruce
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
There were some kinds of gum that were tougher and required you to blow harder — and yes, sometimes it did end up in the dirt.
Thanks for the feedback, Bruce.
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rangewriter
August 17, 2012
I had no idea the roots of chewing gum stretched so far back in history. I always learn something from your blog, Charles!
I do remember my first gum chewing experience…not the precise year, but I think around first grade. I had long, stringy hair. I chomped on my gum as would any neophyte, with mouth open, grinding away like those cows you’d never seen cud chewing before. Problem is, my hair blew into my mouth while I was chewing and when I got home there was bubble gum entangled in my hair and my mom went ballistic. Out came the swear words and the scissors in that order. I spent the next couple of months with a very lopsided hairdo.
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
I guess it was a girl problem back then, Linda. The boys hated their crew cuts, but at least we never got gum in our hair.
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Arindam
August 17, 2012
One more unusual, interesting and brilliant post from you, Sir Charles.I started it, when I was quite young. But as you have mentioned, not sure about the perfect age, when I started it. I still remember my family member’s used to tell me, by chewing this gum too much, there would be a hole in my throat. After I read this post, I realized once I grew up, I never tried to find the real truth behind this “hole in throat story. Sir Charles, Do you have any idea, if this really happens! 🙂
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
I’ve never heard that one, Arindam. People say all kinds of strange things to get the young ones to stop doing something.
Thanks for the comment. It’s always good to hear from you.
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Betty Londergan
August 17, 2012
I still chew gum like a cow … and I love that now I have history on my side to justify the addiction! And your childhood definition of adultery made me laugh — we were always just told it was a mortal sin and covered everything from adultery TO impure thoughts, of which I had a great deal, so I knew that I was going straight to hell in any event. Did you lie awake and dread dying during the night because you had mortal sins on your soul (like from lying to the priest) ?? I sure did. Good times …. ( :
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
I did think about dying in my sleep with sins on my soul, Betty. I even wondered what would happen if I got hit by a car on the way to Confession. Would God take it into account that I was headed for absolution?
So what did you think adultery meant?
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Doug (@AllanDouglasDgn)
August 19, 2012
Thank you, Charles, for once again bringing clarity and enlightenment to one of the great mysteries of the universe. Like you I do not remember the exact instance of my first mouthful of chewing gum, but I do remember being enthralled with those colorful orb filled gumball machines. I’m fairly certain that at some point my parents were looking the other way, i had a nickel in my pocket and I entered into an illicit tryst with the mechanical tooth-decay dispensing demon. I am curious, though, how I managed to hide this from my parents. Perhaps a session of hypnotic regression would reveal this snippet of my childhood.
Keep up the good work, oh Sagely mystic.
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
“…mechanical tooth-decay dispensing demon.”
Great phrase, Allan. I wish I’d written that.
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aviewfromthebrighterside
August 19, 2012
I really enjoyed this. Your title and descriptions have me ruminating on ruminants chewing gum and mastiche in mustaches. Thank you!
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
And your comment had me imagining a cow blowing bubble gum bubbles. That would have been a great cartoon, but difficult to find.
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Sandra Parsons
August 22, 2012
“All of the sisters had taken vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, but it was still hard to comprehend how they didn’t draw the line at wet chewing gum.” – You forgot self-sacrifice. Not that this makes it any more comprehensible…
What a great laugh again, thank you.
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bronxboy55
August 25, 2012
It seems as though self-sacrifice should have been covered by the other three, but I guess they had to make sure. Thanks for the comment, Sandra. I hope you’re feeling well.
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leahandsam
August 27, 2012
I think the real milestone, as a child, was swallowing gum for the first time and surviving!
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bronxboy55
August 28, 2012
I don’t think I ever swallowed gum as a child. After the seven deadly sins, it was next on the list.
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leahandsam
August 28, 2012
It only took one nasty brother jumping out from behind a door and scaring the gum down my throat for me to realise that every day that I was still living was a gift.
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danlynn26
August 29, 2012
Reblogged this on ~*~ Danlynn ~*~.
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bronxboy55
September 4, 2012
Thank you.
Have a great year at school.
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danlynn26
September 5, 2012
Wow, thank you! I really enjoy reading what you write. It is really inspiring.
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