The World According to Gum

The world moves so fast. It really does get difficult to keep up with things. The news, technology, diet and exercise crazes, new products - it's almost too much to handle. Sometimes, I think we definitely make it a little harder on ourselves than we need to. That theory was proven true when I went to buy gum the other day.

Even in the realm of chewing gum, the world is spinning out of control. Flavors used to be so simple - fruit, cinnamon, and mint. But we had to make the choice tougher than that. So the mints got divided into pepper and spear. Neither of those names makes sense to me, by the way, but we won't get bogged down in that. Eventually, it became apparent that those beloved old flavors just weren't enough to satisfy the sophisticated tastes of the world's gum chewers.

The big thing I've noticed recently is that all of the gum flavors are sounding colder and colder. I think the move to low-temperature flavored gum must have started with wintergreen. (Again, I don't even know what that flavor is. I like it, but what is it based on? Is that a fruit? A plant? Or did the folks at Life Savers and Wrigley's just get together and make it up?) After a while, I guess wintergreen began to seem stale, so, of course, here comes winter fresh!

But soon our mouths got accustomed to the freshness of winter and the chewing gum industry - always on their toes - responded to this potential crisis with a flurry of wintry cold brands and flavors - Arctic Blast. Polar Ice. Even Ice Breakers. I get cold just walking down the candy aisle now!

I don't know what's next - probably just frozen pieces of metal that we can get our tongues stuck to (like in "A Christmas Story." What a great movie!). I think that would keep our mouths cool. Or maybe they'll start selling little sticks of mint-flavored ice. Now, you'd think those would melt before they even got to you, but you'd be wrong. No, they wouldn't melt. Not with the high tech packaging they're putting gum in now. What's with those individual blister packs for pieces of gum. That's the same kind of packaging as medicine! That's how important chewing gum is in our society. We take care of it as though it has the power to heal. But I guess that in our hectic world, that's the sort of thing we have to do to ease our burden. This way, at least we know our chewing gum is safe. Frosty, therapeutic, and safe!