You Chew Like a Cow

"Chicle en la clase?!" yelled Senorita Greenlee, my ninth grade Spanish teacher. "No, no. Chicle en el ceste!" she demanded. Gum in the classroom?! No, gum in the waste-paper-basket!

As a language teacher, Senorita Greenlee despised gum in the classroom. She was a sweet little lady, and always patient as we worked through complex verb conjugations and pronoun-matching, exercises we probably couldn't even do in English, much less in Spanish. But the moment a classmate was caught gnawing away at a piece of Fruit Stripe gum, which probably lost its flavor about an hour ago, ninety seconds after it was unwrapped anyway, Senorita Greenlee morphed into the leader of a German heavy metal band.

"Se mastica como una vaca!" she screamed. You chew like a cow! She was a small, Irish, woman, who mostly confused us into submission with her Spanish demands that came in the middle of some other Spanish phrase we were already concentrating on translating. To interrupt such focus with vehement protests against the chewing gum industry was startling to say the least.

I've actually found it difficult, in the moments in my life where chewing gum and other adult freedoms are allowed, to find a brand of gum whose flavor lasts for an entire 50-minute class period, much less an hour and half college-length class.

Fruit Stripe Gum is out of the question. Its flavor rubs off on your hands in the unwrapping process before the gum ever reaches your mouth.

Bubble Tape is a genious concept, and a possible solution to the flavor-loss dilemma, but the amount of chewed gum to dispose of in the end would be unreasonable and embarassing.

The gums that have "flavor capsules" that "burst" in your mouth are okay after the initial shock. I don't know if I'm the only one, but the "flavor burst" is actually painful. After that first bite down, my face always freezes in a contorted fake smile, while I try to hide that my mouth is actually burning, and I'm truly afraid my taste buds are developing scars.

Advertisors who market gum must be so bored, or dilusional. Let's be serious. Their only marketing option is to harp about how long the flavor lasts with any particular gum. It's not like they're about to go after the market who likes "sticker" gum, or "yellower" gum. (Although a small brilliant facet of gums have recently claimed to whitten teeth). Either way, their only real objective is to create a gum whose flavor lasts. So, gum industry, I'd like to challenge you, really this time, to do your job and come up with a gum whose flavor outlasts the professor's lecture.