Don't swallow your gum

Several weeks ago, I purchased a fairly large quantity of Dubble Bubble for my daughter's gum ball machine. The amount of gum I acquired was directly proportional to my own developed taste for the product, since it resembled crack cocaine in addictiveness. After originally buying the pre-filled gum ball machine, I'd proceeded to consume almost the entire contents in just a few short days, and thought I'd better stock up on the stuff if I was to maintain a positive relationship with my young child.

Unfortunately, much like Al Pacino in "Scarface," when confronted with such a sizeable amount of pseudo-cocaine, I attacked it with relish. I practically lived off bubble gum for several days. I couldn't get enough. I ate six, seven, sometimes eight small globes at a time in an attempt to find the perfect mix of synthetic flavors. I studied the texture of chewed gum by placing the most perfect tooth and fingerprint impressions ever taken outside of a crime lab. I watched with fascination as I created drab shades of gray from the most myriad selection of brightly colored items. I was almost a scientist of bubble gum by the end of those few days, you see. And each experiment became yet another lump lying heavy on my stomach.

Alas, I was destined for trouble. After consuming such a vast quantity of bubble gum, certain bodily processes started to become strange. My bowel movements rotated from frequent to nearly constipated for several days. For the life of me, I couldn't predict at what point the need to crap would attack. When I did plop down to plop, both the defecation process and the subsequent wiping would seem almost...    Sticky.

This went on for another day or two. It was only then that an event occurred that would change my philosophy on gum swallowing forever. Perhaps the bolus of evil had lodged itself in my colon somewhere just as my mother claimed it would, or perhaps the passing of such hideousness naturally requires an extended length of time; I fear I will never know the answer. All I know is that during an otherwise perfectly normal evening of watching television and reading a book, the cramps began.

Read the Confessions of a Gum Swallower story.

via