My Favorite Mistake: Falling Asleep With This Gum In My Mouth

As a seeker of culinary enlightenment, where can I go from here? I've already reported on toothpaste, cats, mystery snacks found in my doctor's office... A pretty well-rounded base of culinary experiences too often underreported by food writers. But the wise know that enlightenment can't be aggressively pursued like some corporate takeover or fashion statement. One must cultivate an open heart, and an open mind, and wait patiently for enlightenment to present itself.

It is therefore in the pursuit of true passivity and freedom from ego that I can joyfully report upon my newest discovery.

I fell asleep with a chewed-up piece of gum in my mouth last night. Specifically, Wrigley's Extra Dessert Delights Sugar Free Gum, in the Root Beer Float flavor.

I also fell asleep fully dressed. I basically lugged myself home from work, ate dinner, and passed out.

And rightly so! I'm still paying off the sleep debt that I accrued last weekend, which some people know as Labor Day (or "American Labor Day" in Canada), a weekend also known as "PAX," or as "Heather's Birthday Weekend."

(If you're reading this, HI HEATHER!!!) ... (But if you're not Heather, and you don't know who she is--how did you find my blog, anyway?--isn't it so glamorous and mysterious to refer to some unknown birthday girl right in the middle of a review of chewing gum? Her birthday must be pretty important. Which it is, obviously, or else we wouldn't be having this conversation. No? Not impressed? Well, that's okay. I don't need to impress you, because I've already impressed myself.)

While I did my best to observe the conjunction of PAX and Heather's Birthday in a responsible fashion, staying up until 3am in speakeasies, restaurants, nightclubs, dives, and fancy hotel rooms for a long weekend meant that once the "Everyone from out-of-country is here!" adrenaline finally started to wear off, I developed a most magnificent ability to fall asleep in mere minutes--nay, seconds!--after deciding to. Hence last night's inelegant rush into my own pillow, despite being nearly a week away from my last cocktail.

But back to the subject at hand, which is the act of falling asleep with "Root Beer Float" flavored chewing gum in my mouth.

In the best of times, I can't get a full night's sleep anymore. Our new mattress is extremely firm, and gives me some absolutely royal upper back cramps. And my cats, once they see me wake up at 4am to stretch, assume that it may very well be time for breakfast. Or at least time to run over and sit on me, like little children with a pony. It's very cute, but inconvenient.

I didn't fully realize until last night just how aversive the taste of my natural morning breath is.

Inevitably, my first conscious act upon waking up in the middle of the night to stretch and roll over, was to chew the gum that I discovered was still in my mouth. I'd say to myself "Huh! There's a little flavor left! It tastes WAY better than the rest of my mouth!" I'd chew a little, go back to sleep, wake up, be pleasantly surprised by the gum, chew a little, go back to sleep, wash, rinse, repeat.

I also noticed, whenever rediscovering the gum, that my teeth felt gently cushioned by it. This was more of a relief than I'd expected it to be. Normally, I chew on the sides of my tongue a little bit when I sleep, and clench my jaws together, because my subconscious mind loves chewing. But this time? My tongue was way passé. Gum all the way! In fact, I might even invest in a bite guard, assuming that they come in root beer flavor.

Now, you might want to ask me why I could consider such a good decision as falling asleep with this gum in my mouth to be a "mistake." After all, the experience itself was obviously a total success.

Three factors must be kept in mind:

1. Choking Hazard. Only a fool or a misanthrope would seriously endorse sleeping with gum in the mouth. Because I am both a fool AND a misanthrope, the two qualities cancel each other out, and I'm left with a genuine desire to avoid choking people, by giving bad advice over the internet. Including myself, because I am also people.

2. My Teeth. Sure, the gum is sugar-free. And sure, I brush my teeth when I wake up. But can I guarantee that sleeping with gum in my mouth is safe for my teeth? That its bite guard properties are with the unknown risks? I simply don't have the dental background to make such a claim. I just don't know.

3. The Gum Itself. It's true that I not only love this gum, but I love all of the flavors in this Willy Wonka surrealist line of "Pretend it's food, fatso!" gums. It's already well-established that I love "pretend it's food" items, pretty much across the board.

And the first flavor when mawing down on this stuff is a pretty root-beery effort. I'm impressed by what the Wrigley's chemists were able to accomplish. However, as I continue to chew, the next flavor I experience is just a hint of artificial banana. It's still well-rendered and sweet enough that I'm into it, but I can't consider the gum to be an exclusively root beer float product.

In addition, when I AM awake, the flavor doesn't last as long, and the gum becomes as tough as a wad of celery strings after a couple of hours. It simply wouldn't fly as a bubble gum, which would need to retain its elastic properties and flavor much longer.

Essentially, if I were assigning the Wrigley's chemists a grade, like it was a final project in an art class, this is how I would break it down:

A+++ for creativity
B for initial flavor
C for chewiness and flavor retention, long-term

Still, it was an experience worthy of documentation.