Communal Gum

I don’t know how, or why, but it seems my family’s taken on a sort of gum addiction over the past year, specifically the kind of gum that comes in the sizable Mentos and Icebreaker container things. I suppose there’s really nothing wrong with it at all, I just don’t think it’s that prevalent in most households. People like their gum to themselves, methinks.

Nevertheless, we pretty much have some gum container on the counter weekly, open to everybody. Usually it’s plain mint, but sometimes one of us ventures into the unknown and gets a flavored variant.

We’ve had, in order of “likability” (how fast we finished it, because we eat this stuff pretty darn often I guess):

• Mentos Pure Fresh Mint
• Ice Breakers Mint
• Mentos Pure Fresh Citrus
• Ice Breakers Pure Lemon
• Mentos Pure Fresh Spearmint
• Mentos Pure Fresh Watermelon

Minor Thoughts

Mentos Watermelon lost all flavor pretty much instantly, in all of our experiences. Even then, the flavor is so extremely of that “artificial watermelon flavor” archetype that it’s just unenjoyable overall. Though, who really likes watermelon gum? I’d reckon it’s a loud minority.

Citrus Mentos is really nice, but it being sugar-free puts it kinda off-limits for me, since sugar free gum isn’t the greatest for your vocal cords (at least that’s what my choir teacher says, I don’t actually know if that’s true.)

Spearmint is alright, but in every gum category (not just the kind we share) we find that spearmint just never stacks up to regular mint. It just tastes like a worse derivative of the original.

Overall, I think that the communal gum cup is a pretty good system. You really don’t appreciate gum as much as when you don’t have it, and when you always have it nearby, you just gravitate towards having some, I dunno why. It would be nice to take some along to school, but I’ve tried that and it just felt weird taking gum out of a container that isn’t its original source. Ah well. Gum is good. Gum is great.