Yum

Thanks to Sunday Scribblings for providing the prompt word “yummy” or “yum.”

Remember when you were a kid and it was a big deal to get a pack of gum? Going to the grocery store with my mom was made bearable by the chance that there might be a pack of bubble gum at the end of miles and miles of cold aisles.

I would get to the end of the tunnel and, assuming Mama gave the go-ahead, it was decision time. Original? Grape? Watermelon? I went with original on occasion, ‘cause I was a little weird even as a kid, but it was almost always watermelon, even if Mama said it tasted like paint. (Incidentally, that’s the same thing she said about blue raspberry Icees*. I didn’t give her opinion much weight, since she always asked for half a piece of gum instead of a whole one. What kind of a judge could she be if she couldn’t even handle a whole piece?)

Every once in a while I would walk on the wild side and go for grape, but it was never as good as I hoped it would be. Grape had a nice starting flavor. It was really grapey – which is to say that it didn’t taste anything like any grape that had ever been grown on the planet Earth, but it had that candy grape flavor and lots of it. For about three minutes, and then it was just blah. (Watermelon didn’t taste anything like real watermelon either, but the watermelon blah was a lot better than the grape blah.)

The older I got, the more aware I became of the inevitable blah. Eventually, after much testing, my brother and I decided Bubble Yum was our brand of choice. It seemed to keep its flavor longer than Bubblicious. I’m sure our testing wouldn’t stand up to any scientific definition of “rigorous,” but it was enough to convince me to stick with the ‘Yum over the ‘Licious.

There were other options, of course, but none of them really stood the test of time or value. As fun as it was to get a gumball out of the traca-traca (Mama’s Cuban term for the gumball machine), that was really a rip-off: you had to spend a whole dime, or even a quarter, and you got one piece that was hard and the flavor lasted forty seconds. Big League Chew, which I now in my old age find very disturbing, was reserved for a special treat. Bubble Tape came out and that was really a novel and fun idea, too. But I mostly made Bubble Yum my brand of choice.

It was on Bubble Yum that I mastered the art of the non-bubble pop. Sure, blowing bubbles is fun, but with an older brother around I almost always end up with gum all over my face. Luckily, my dad, who was partial to spearmint Wrigley's Chew, was able to teach me the non-bubble pop. It’s an art that really can’t be explained in writing, except to say that you get the popping noise without the big air bubble. The fact that my brother was highly irritated by the multiple, quickly-paced loud pops was a thrilling and empowering bonus that made up for my dad’s lack of success in teaching me how to whistle. (I could get a nice long solid note out, but couldn’t shift the tone. I couldn’t whistle the theme to the Andy Griffith Show, is what I’m saying. Then I got braces to repair the giant gap between my front teeth and it turned out that I couldn’t even get a solid note out.)

The braces also put an end to chewing bubble gum. For two long years I wasn’t allowed to touch the stuff. I was stuck with sugarless chewing gum. Where’s the fun in that?

The fun is actually in the fact that you don’t rot your teeth out. That’s why I’ve gone back to the sugarless chewing stuff now. That’s surely a sign that I’m getting old, but that bright green and pink Bubble Yum wrapper still catches my eye. The price catches my eye, too. It costs about fifty cents now. I remember when it cost thirty-two cents. This is most definitely a sign that I’m getting old, and if it keeps up I’ll be able to tell stories like my dad used to (“I remember when we could go to the movies and get a coke and Snickers bar for a quarter!”)

Still, I’m thinking fifty cents is probably worth the fun and the yum that comes in a pack of gum.

*The names Icee, Bubble Yum, Bubblicious, Big League Chew, Bubble Tape, Wrigley's Chew, and Snickers are all trademarks of various companies that I don’t own. But I kind of wish I did. Can you imagine the thrill of being responsible for providing sheer joy and nutrition-less calories to people around the world? Also, if I owned Bubble Yum, I wouldn’t have made the cotton candy flavor that freaky dark blue and bright pink swirl color. That was a total turn-off.