The Chewing Gum Conundrum

You know how there’s always those things that you can never find even when you look for them all over town, literally? But then those elusive little things end up with you when you least expect it. Take, for example, those chocolates that your aunt brings back with her when she goes abroad, or those bookmarks your dad got when he went for a business trip somewhere. Once you’ve eaten all of the chocolates and bookmarked the shit out of those bookmarks, you want more. So what do you do? You go look for it, in every store you can think of. Even the most fancy ones, but you don’t find it anywhere. Step 2: Throw stuff to express frustration. Step 3: ? Step 4: Rule the world!(?)

You know, back when I was young we used to have these chewing gums with a cartoon character drawn on both sides. One side was red and the other was yellow, and in thick black outline, a cartoon character that suspiciously looked like a cat and dog hybrid, was drawn on both sides. When you opened it, you got a silver paper in which the gum was. It was really big and juicy for my kid-small mouth then. I didn’t learn how to blow bubbles with gum until I was 12 or 13 (shame on me, I know) so I just chewed it for hours until it tasted completely hideous. It was a great pleasure. I saw these chewing gums till maybe 3-4 years back and since then they’ve completely disappeared. No shop keeps them. Blame it on globalisation, all these fancy new chewing gums coming in from fancy countries with their fancy wrappers, displacing really good local goods.

Anybody find those chewing gums, you tell me first. Got it? This is some important shit.