Chewing Gum

Posted on 2004/04/26 10:40:46 (April 2004) by john.

A minty time capsule from yesteryear.

I was visiting my Mum at the weekend. As it was really nice weather, we spent quite a lot of time out in the garden. Whilst happily lazing (on a sunny afternoon, of course) I glanced down to the end of the garden, where I noticed Mum's old ornamental clay beer barrel.

My Mum had owned it for as long as I could remember. It was probably a relic from the years when we used to run a pub. It always used to sit inside the house, but a year or so ago Mum had finally got fed up with it getting in the way, and decided to put it in the back garden instead.

Every time I see the barrel I am reminded of the chewing gum incident. When I was about 9 years old, as was often the case, me and my brother were fighting. I had just recently bought a new packet of Wrigley's Spearmint Gum from the local shop, and my brother had stolen it from me. As we happened to be in the room where the clay barrel was, it was inevitable that my brother would threaten to drop the chewing gum in the little hole at the top, both of us knowing full well if it went in there it would never come back. I can't remember exactly what happpened in those last fateful few seconds, I may have tried to make a grab for it, which caused him to lose his grip, but whatever did happen, predictably, the chewing gum ended up in the barrel. I was distinctly upset by this altrication, and Judge Mum had to be called in to arbitrate - her decree being that my brother should go to the shop, and buy me some new chewing gum. The replacement gum was Juicy Fruit, if I recall, and it was sweeeeeet.

As is the way of memories, over time they take on an almost mythical quality, with the timing and the finer details going a bit hazy. When I told the story to my Mum, she said she couldn't remember it happening - to her I guess me and my brother squabbling was just an every day occurence. Looking at the barrel I would often wonder if it happened the way I remembered it, or even if it really happened at all.

The obvious solutiuon to this quandry is to see if the chewing gum is still inside the barrel. Several times in the past I had attempted to peer in through the hole at the top, or even try to take a picture through the hole. But every time previously I've always just seen blackness. I've shook the barrel about, and it it always rattled, so I knew there was something inside, but there was no way of telling what exactly.

So last weekend I set myself the task of proving the presence of the chewing gum with renewed vigour. It occurred to me that part of the problem was to do with constrasting light levels. Outside of course, it is typically very bright. Inside the barrel is very dark. Typically when peering in through the hole in the barrel, I'd only spent a few seconds looking, but thinking about it my eyes would need longer than that to adjust. So, I repositioned the barrel to get the most light behind me I could manage, and put my eye right up to the hole... and waited. It took a while, but gradually, very dim outlines began to form in the bottom of the barrel, something first that looked like a screwed up bit of paper... and then, just on the edge of the field of vision the hole provided me, the corner of something rectangular... could this be the Wrigley's Spearmint Gum....?

I then noticed there was a second hole, in the side, at the base of the barrel. If I could somehow get a narrow beam of light through there, I might be able to illuminate the chamber enough to see the chewing gum from the top. A quick rifle through the boxes in my Mum's utility room, and I had a torch, albeit, to add to the oddness, a dynamo powered one that you have to pump to activate.

So back to the end of the garden I marched, put the torch against one hole, eye against the other, and then pumped furiously on the dynamo. The light came on and off in bursts, like a very slow strobe, and after my eyes had adjusted again, then another glimpse, a corner of something rectangular... I could just about make out a colour - red, but then bit of the design of the packet - just one end was red, in a kind of triangle shape... There was now no doubt in my mind this was the chewing gum. The chewing gum was in there.

But the brief glimpses weren't enough, I needed more. I wanted to see it up close, to touch it. I enlisted Chie to help in the operation, and managed to find in the ever bountiful utility room a kind of strange bendy grabber tool thingy, perfect for the job.

Great patience was required. It took a number of attempts before we'd grabbed onto something, something solid.... only to find it was just a bit of unintersting paper. Undeterred, we tried again, something much more solid this time... A blue Lego railway track with a flat red bit of lego stuck on one end. This jogged another memory - all those years ago, me and my brother had fashioned a crude implement to attempt to extract the chewing gum, which had the inevitable result that we'd lost a bit of Lego as well. Further attempts found more small bits of lego, string, and paper until eventually, the bendy grabber thing hooked onto something chunky, solid, really tangible, but slightly, well, chewy... In went the torch again, and I could seem beyond a shadow of a doubt, it was the Wrigley's Spearmint Gum. It was a tense moment. The grabber thing had only a weak grip on the chewing gum packet, and we had to maneuvre it ever so delicately to get it out of the small hole at the bottom. With the attention to detail of diamond cutters we carefully and painstakingly shifted the grabber thing, a few millimetres at a time, until, joy of joys, the chewing gum was out of the barrel, and onto the grass. The Wrigley's Spearmint Gum had emmerged.

It sounds daft, but this was quite an emotional moment for me. A memory from my childhood had been distilled in this barrel, hidden and preserved, and now we had got it out. For eighteen years, the chewing gum had rested in the dark recesses of the barrel, undisturbed, silent, waiting... The longer it had spent in there, the harder I had found it to believe it was still in there, as though a solid object like the chewing gum might fade away like my memory had. But no, there it was, perfect, unperturbed, and not even particularly mouldy looking.

I spent a while looking at the chewing gum packet. It was unopened, and in really good condition. The packaging was familiar whilst still being noticeably different from how the same product looks today. I think the ingredients list might have changed as well, although I didn't have a modern one to hand for comparison.

Eventually came the question of what to do with it. I considered for a while taking it home, and maybe trying to frame it or something. The thought of trying to eat a piece did briefly cross my mind, although I quickly thought better of it - I don't recall seeing a best before date, but as it was probably purchased in 1986 I had a fairly strong notion it would have gone past it.

In the end, it seemed like the only right thing to do was to put it back in the barrel. Even my Mum thought this was the right thing to do, which suprised me a little, as she's a very tidy person... but maybe it was a case of everything in its right place... I guess it was as though to take the chewing gum out of the barrel permanently would be to lose the memory or something... Whatever it was, none of us could really articulate why the chewing gum should go in the barrel, but it just seemed to be the right thing to do.

So back it went. Maybe I'll fish it out again when I'm 45.

Tis the Butterfly Effect. Taking the chewing gum out of the barrel would disturb a delicate cosmic balance... and possibly result in the death of a kitten somewhere in Guam.

Was there a photo taken of said gum?

Posted by King Russ of Lower Gobble on the Wane at 2004/04/26 13:22:04.

No I didn't take a photo - I should have done really.

Posted by John at 2004/04/26 13:39:25.

"No I didn't take a photo - I should have done really" -

DOH is all say.

Posted by kev at 2004/04/26 18:24:17.

Oh, well, never mind. Do bear it in mind though. 2022 isn't that far away.

Posted by Russ at 2004/04/26 19:57:07.

Can someone please tell me of how to get rid of the image of John pumping away furiously while crouched over a hole in a barrel?

Posted by Mike at 2004/04/27 09:24:20.

Yea I guess there was some slightly unfortunate choices of wording in amongst that lot... Sorry about that!

Posted by John at 2004/04/27 11:19:20.

The gum must remain in the barrel. Otherwise you'll reverse the polarity of the neutron-flow, and unravel the causal nexus. Causes will no longer lead to effects, and effects will occur all by themselves - without any apparent cause. The Universe as we know it will cease to exist. The gum must most definitely stay in the barrel.

Posted by Jimmy at 2004/04/27 13:08:29.

Jimmy is right- it's always dangerous to tinker with a transmat beam.

Posted by Abou Hamed at 2004/04/27 13:14:46.

I'm worried that you've already brought the doom of the planet closer by merely removing the Gum for a few minutes. Stop doing such irresponsible things.

Posted by tom at 2004/05/04 14:58:07.

Does this work again now...?

Posted by John at 2004/05/26 08:15:25.

Sure...?

Posted by John at 2004/05/26 08:20:09.

I've ended up on your website quite by accident, but it's proved to result in a highly entertaining afternoon. Thanks.
p.s. the gum is back in its rightful place, please take a photo when it makes its next appearance

Posted by Molly at 2004/06/15 16:03:33.

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