I Hate My Husband's Chewed Gum!

                  

     I need to vent. For twelve long years, my husband and part-time nemesis, has left chewed gum in odd places around the house. I’ve found gum stuck (a) on the bottom of my dinner plates, (b) on the margarine container lid, (c) on the bathroom sink, (d) on the napkin holder, (e) on a magazine in the living room, and finally (f) on the kitchen counter atop a paper towel, which for some reason, it remained over night.

    Not only am I grossed out by this unsanitary behavior, I’m baffled as to why a middle-aged man feels the need to save chewed gum.

    In downtown Charleston, we have a wooden telephone pole designated especially for this purpose. Everyone, tourists included, sticks his or her gum to the pole. My husband walks past it as if it’s invisible and then sticks his gum to a dinner spoon at the Red Lobster.

     If all this sounds disgusting, it was, and is, but what happened at our son’s basketball practice was the gum d'état.

    At 4:55 PM, my husband called my cell phone, frantic. “We’re out of peanuts. Stop by the store and buy some. I will pick up little Johnny from the daycare and bring him to practice. He needs to eat and he won’t eat bread in my truck.”

   Why our son won’t eat bread in the truck is long story, so I’ll save it and continue.

   My husband is a heath-nut who dances to the tune of his own ideas about what’s healthy. According to him, all anyone needs to survive is peanuts and bread, and my son will fall ill and die if he doesn’t eat either before basketball practice.

    Anyway, I met him outside the gym, jar of peanuts in hand. My son and he sat in his trunk and munched away while I waited. When they were finished, my hubby passed me the half-full jar, and the lid and said, “Hang on to this for me.”

      I obliged and then placed the lid on the jar and twisted, but it balked. When I flipped it over to see what the hold up was, I spied chewed gum smashed to the threads.

    I glared at my husband. “Why in the world would you stick your gum to the lid of the peanut jar?”

    He ignored me and walked away as if I were the stupid one.

    I calmly removed the gum with a Kleenex and I stashed it in my purse for later.

    After we returned home, I found a more appropriate place for the chewed gum—in the crotch of a pair of my husband’s tighty-whites.

     Let him sit and chew on that one for a while!