Tales of a Teenage Gum Thief

by Kaya

In junior high I thought I was the Robin Hood of chewing gum. I would steal gum from the rich (the supermarket or local gas station) and distribute it to the poor (my friends at school). I believed gum needed to be enjoyed by the common folk, not reserved for the bourgeoisie, spearmint-masticating elite.

I’d seen too many smug looks from these aristocrats with their limitless expendable income allowing them all the Carefree and Bazooka Joe they could wish for. No more would my people (12 to 15 year-olds) be oppressed. No more would we beg our parents for a stick of Juicy Fruit. No more would the greedy oil companies (in particular the Mobil station up the street) control the flow of gum in my neighborhood, restricting who would get the sweet tastes of Hubba Bubba and Bubble Yum depending on your ability to pay for it.

Perhaps I have a different understanding of freedom, but if a young boy or girl can’t enjoy their god-given right to Watermelon Bubblicious without having to subject themselves to an oppressive capitalist system based on payment for goods, then...then...ah, who am I kidding? This belief in the inequality of the allocation of gum in our society (did you know only .1% of the population controls 80% of the gum?) and making up gum-based statistics was simply a way to ease my gum stealing guilt.

I had all kinds of ways to justify my gum theft. If it wasn’t that gum was being hoarded by the upper crust and I was chosen, like Moses or Neo, to free my people and share the gum, it was that my Mom had probably been overcharged, “like a million times” at the gas station and now they owed my family some gum. Besides, I didn’t just steal it and eat the entire pack – I always gave away all but one piece, which I saved for myself. It was a small commission for making the deal. Even non-profits have to pay their employees...and I do like me some Dubble Bubble.

My life as a Gum Baron didn’t last long, but almost every school day for about a year I stole a pack of gum. The amazing thing is, other than this chewing gum kleptomania (CGK), I was a well-mannered, honest and kind kid. I didn’t steal anything else in my life (okay, baseball cards once) and I never got into trouble (okay, I got caught going into the swimming pool when my parents weren’t home). For the most part, I was a good kid and the last person that you’d suspect to be operating such a prolific theft operation.

My main target to pilfer was the gas station. The gum and assorted candy was kept on a shelf in front of the cash register, right under the cashier’s nose. With a long sleeved shirt on (riding our bikes to school at 6:30 am was always a bit chilly) I would nonchalantly grab a pack of Chewels or Extra or Big Red and casually pull my hand within the sleeve of my shirt. I’d look around a bit more and eventually walk out with my loot easily hidden in my hand, obscured by my oversized shirt.

It may not have been an elaborate scheme, but it’s beauty was in its simplicity. I was then off to school with my merry men chomping merrily on our sticks or cubes of sugary goodness. The gum is happily dispensed among the young and oppressed and I’m the hero that gives out free gum. Everyone is happy. I’m sure stealing is wrong, but I was only evening up the score with the supposed overcharging that I was sure had happened to my parents. Right? Besides, there’s no better way to first approach the light brown haired girl with the pink sweater than to offer a free (and purloined) piece of Trident.

Despite my knack for stealing sweets, I never stole other candy. Perhaps it was due to the shape of other candy (I would’ve had to wear a trench coat to sneak a Charleston Chew out of the store) that I focused my “work” on chewing gum.

Gum had always been a passion of mine. For Christmas one year I asked my Mom for a box of Cherry Bubble Yum bubble gum. A box. Sixteen packs of massively sweet gum. All cherry. I imagine it was like buying a carton of cigarettes for someone who enjoys smoking, but never really had many cigarettes around. I was chewing through a pack a day. At least.

I began to eat the gum like candy. While that may sound like what you’re supposed to do with gum, I would literally eat it like I was partaking in a bag of Skittles. I’d chew it and swallow it and grab a new piece. Chew it, swallow it and grab a new piece. Chew, swallow, repeat.

It’s easy to go through a pack of gum in a couple of minutes this way.

I can only pray that the “gum stays undigested in your stomach for seven years” rumor is untrue. If not, I’m screwed. I probably swallowed more gum than real food for roughly a month. I’m still afraid to go to one of these groovy, organic, holistic, colonic places for a treatment. How would I respond when Raven, my colonicist, asked me about the half-pound of cherry gum lodged in my colon?

“Um...that’s part of a performance art piece I’m working on. Just leave it there.”

Despite my swashbuckling ways and interest to share the gum wealth in my community, I ended by gum burglary ways before I was caught. One morning when I was snagging a pack of Dentyne, my fortunes changed. Just as I had the pack of contraband gum securely in my shirt I heard an enormously loud “BOOM!” While I was surprised that the store owner had decided to shoot me in the back with a shotgun, I *had* been stealing an awful lot of gum.

In reality, I wasn’t shot at all. The remarkably timed and exceptionally jarring explosion had been a boy outside who had over inflated his bicycle tire. The explosion scared the bejeezus out of me and I instinctually shoved my hidden gum back onto the shelf. I took it as a sign and never stole gum again. And, like that, my triumphant career as the Robin Hood of Gum had unceremoniously ended.

When you don’t share Fruit Stripe and Chiclets with your buddies each day, you really learn who your true friends are. Like the old saying goes, “If your friends stick by you when you don’t have any gum to share, then they’re your friends for life.”

Amen to that.