Cracking gum gives me visions of cracking heads

My sister and I went with my father to an appointment on Thursday at the Health Sciences Ambulatory Care unit.

Much to my delight, I can report that as far as the services rendered there went, there was not one horrible thing that happened to him or us, unlike recent past experiences at the Day Surgery unit.

But…there’s always something, isn’t there?

There we were, my sister and I, in the small waiting room, waiting. Not 10 feet away, another lady was waiting for someone else. She had been sat there about as long as we had been, talking to someone, and I hadn’t really paid any attention to her. That other someone was eventually called to be seen in the clinic, leaving this other lady out in the waiting room with us.

We would not have known she was even there had she not started cracking her gum for all she was worth.

While her friend was with her, she was talking, and therefore her mouth was otherwise engaged. But once the friend went in to her appointment, Gum Crack Ho started in chomping and cracking, cracking and chomping.

For the information of gum-chewers worldwide, no one, not even Sophia Loren or Angelina Jolie, looks good chewing gum. My sainted mother always compared gum-chewers to cows chewing their cud. My mother was never wrong. The beauty of people who merely chew gum, though, is that I have the option to not look at them if I don’t want to. And besides, if people don’t mind looking like cows chewing their cud, I don’t mind. It’s nothing to me.

It’s not quite the same with cracking gum, unfortunately. When you have to sit in a waiting room with someone who insists on inflicting their body noises on everyone else, you cannot escape it, short of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying “nyah-nyah-nyah” over and over to yourself to counteract the noise. You just have to sit there and have your nerves jangled by someone making that annoying, irritating, unnecessary, startling racket that serves no purpose whatsoever other than to disrupt my peace of mind, or to further aggravate an unsettled mind, particularly when sat in a hospital waiting room, a place no one wants to be. As I said to my sister, “I’d rather she was over there farting. At least you could rationalize that she couldn’t help herself.” My sister was quick to point out that this particular woman’s gum cracking melody already sounded like a string of farts.

What is it about people that makes them think that everyone within earshot wants to hear their body noises? It’s not only the gum crackers. It’s also the whistlers. People walk along a hospital corridor or in a shopping mall, or sit behind you on a plane, whistling like they think they’re Pavarotti and everyone wants to hear them. NO WE DON’T. Shut up, for God’s sake and keep your off-tune muzak to yourself!!!  

I mean, think about it!!! If somebody strolling down the main concourse of the Avalon Mall suddenly burst into song, "Que Sera, Sera", for example, people would be looking at this person like they were out of their mind, and someone would probably be calling the Mental. Why is there such a dichotomy between singers and whistlers? Why can't I be allowed the call the Mental on whistlers, or gum crackers?

Gum crackers are one of the reasons why I haven’t been to a movie in years. They sit behind me like they know I'm the person who is far and away the most likely to be driven crazy by the racket. And there I sit, unable to concentrate on the movie, all the while thinking how much I'd like to swing around and stuff their pursed lips full of my fist. BUT… next week, my sister and I are planning on venturing into Studio 12 to see “The King’s Speech”. GOD HELP THE SON-OF-A-BITCH WHO COMES WITHIN 50 FEET OF US, CRACKING GUM IN THAT THEATER. I will lose my frigging mind, right there. That’s a promise. And a warning. Someone will be ending up at the Mental, guaranteed.

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