Chugga Chugga Chew Chew

Technology isn’t always our friend. Recent studies show plastic water bottles shed as many as 24,000 “micro-bits” of plastic into the consumer’s body. These bits measure 1/1000th of a meter across. But more recent studies – studies we didn’t have the technology for even five years ago – reveal the same bottles sheds another 200,000 “nano-bits”. At 1/1,000th the width of a human hair, these infinitesimal particles are so small they pass through the membranes of the body’s organs, leading to heaven knows what kind of damage. “Gulp!”

We love our water bottles!

Let’s leave this horror movie of science-you-didn’t-want-to-know behind and go with glass or metal containers instead.  But it’s virtually impossible to avoid ingesting plastic particles anyway.  And many people make a habit of it every day… with chewing gum.  Gum contains the same microplastics as water bottles.  No surprise there.  You shouldn’t really ingest any of the ingredients in chewing gum.

When you’re a kid however, you don’t care about ingredients (let alone bits of plastic).  Gum chewing is a habit I absolutely subscribed to in childhood.  I still remember the barber who cut my hair when I was single-digits old.  The reward for being a good boy in the chair was to help myself to one of those little wrapped chunks of Bazooka bubble gum.  Bubble gum has a distinctive flavor I can still recall decades later.  The pink stuff also has the built-in game of blowing big, sticky bubbles.

gumballs

After Bazooka came Bubble Yum, a trendy alternative because it was a softer chew from the get-go and packaged in larger chunks.  Bubble Yum came in several flavors.  But for me, chewing gum evolved from “bubble” to “sugarless” in a heartbeat, thanks to one too many trips to the dentist.  Choosing from the “prize shelf” after my fillings, I always went for the pack of Dentyne instead of the toys.  Dentyne was the dentist’s way of encouraging less sugar (and more saliva).  Dentyne was my way of thinking it was still okay to chew gum.

Somewhere between Bubble Yum and Dentyne came those slim packs of “stick gum”, including Doublemint, Juicy Fruit, Clove, and for this licorice aficionado, Black Jack.  I also consumed my fair share of Chiclets.  But my gum habit eventually evolved to more of  a”breath mint” chew.  The one I remember best was “Freshen Up”, the green chunk of gum encasing the small dose of mouthwash gel.  You’d get this mind-blowing burst of mint the moment you bit into it.  Pretty novel for chewing gum.

What I never saw coming – which ground my chewing gum habit to an abrupt halt – was TMJ, also known as (the more scary-sounding) “dysfunction of the temporomandibular joint”.  In plain English, TMJ is sustained pain in the jaw muscles from overuse.  It’s nasty, and if you’re not careful it can be chronic.  For me it was relieved by backing off on the chewing gum… as well as breakfast bowls of Grape Nuts.  If you’ve had TMJ yourself, you know it’s a little unnerving (pun intended) because there’s no guarantee you’re ever gonna get rid of it.

Every now and then someone offers me a piece of gum and I politely decline.  I’m not interested in the return of jaw pain and besides, I’ve developed a preference for breath mints instead.  As for you, whether you chugga chugga (your water) or chew chew (your gum), don’t forget about those nasty nano-plastics.  Just like Mr. TMJ, they’re not your friend.

LEGO Notre-Dame de Paris – Update #11

(Read about the start of this “church service” in Highest Chair)

Today we “leveled the praying field” 🙂   Bags 19, 20, and 21… of 34 bags of pieces, brought the height of the nave to virtually the same as the chancel.  It’s safe to say the lion’s share of the remaining pieces will be (tiny and) focused on building the roof structure and west end bell towers.

Arches and more arches

Dropping a piece down, down, down into the sanctuary – which I managed to do twice today through the top square openings you see here – is no laughing matter.  You might say, “Just flip the model over and shake them out, Dave” but I’m way too far along to risk it falling apart.  Instead, I had to reach down with my giant fingers, gently pinch, and then pull back like a construction crane.  I hope I didn’t scare the parishioners in the process.

We built framed windows today, (plastic) glass and all!  These can be seen in the final photo, on the west end of the cathedral above the doors.  We also built – in somewhat assembly-line fashion – another fourteen of the cathedral’s distinctive flying buttresses.  But the most tedious, time-consuming task of all was the arched windows you see along the upper walls of the nave in the first photo.  Each is assembled from a dozen finger-numbing pieces.

Uniform height

Finally, a word about weight.  I picked up the cathedral the other day and went, “Holy cow!” (ha).  Turns out this beast weighs a robust three pounds already.  That’s a lot of plastic.  And given today’s blog topic I’m thankful the model isn’t edible. 

Running build time: 10 hrs. 28 min.

Total leftover pieces: 28 (no new ones!)

Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “Chewing gum can shed microplastics into saliva…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

23 thoughts on “Chugga Chugga Chew Chew”

  2. It has been ages since I have chewed gum! I always liked the flavor of Dentyne, but the flavor never lasted long. There was also Beeman’s. When I was younger, my fave was Beech Nut’s Yipes Stripes. The one I never liked was Juicy Fruit – it never tasted at all like fruit to me.

    Ah, the nano plastics. I distract myself from thinking about them by remembering that every single medicine ever prescribed has found its way into our water supply, and that’s probably worse for us than the plastic particles.

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    1. To your last paragraph, I think we humans spend too much time studying and stressing about that which we cannot control. Best to just focus on the non-nano (big) picture instead.

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  3. Dave, I was never allowed to have candy or bubblegum as a kid, but walking home from school, I did dip into my allowance at a convenience store to buy the occasional Bazooka bubblegum, chewed it while walking home, then discarded it before I got home … hmm, did I have bubblegum breath though? Were my parents onto me? I think I was older when I tried Black Jack, Teaberry and Fruit Stirpe and the innovative Bubble Yum; Freshen Up was a favorite of mine too for that minty burst.

    Like you I have not chewed gum in years in any shape or form and I don’t miss it. I also have TMJ but have been lucky to never have had a minute’s pain from it. It likely began after I got my braces off my teeth. I had “full metal jacket” wraparound metal braces and headgear (for nighttime) and they were on for almost three years. My teeth were somewhat crooked but with no “adult orthodontists” near where I lived and my mother didn’t drive, so my father would have had to take time from work once a month for visits. So when I began driving, I got braces.

    Now, my dentist and dental hygienist cringe when they say “open wide” because of the cracking noise, but I assure them it is all good and there is no pain. For that reason, it’s also been years since I bit into a large apple, or any piece of fruit, nor attempted to enjoy a Big Mac. I figure that I’ve never had troubles to this point, maybe my jaw will get stuck like that? I never knew that Grape Nuts cereal would contribute to TMJ. I loved Grape Nuts in my yogurt, but gave it up after I got braces and never went back to eating it.

    Congrats on your progress on your Notre-Dame Cathedral project. I laughed at “leveled the praying field” – you have a lot of patience to finish this masterpiece.

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    1. To be honest, I think Grape Nuts led to the initial appearance of TMJ. After that I was paranoid about any food where strong chewing was involved. I will say, despite my poor dental hygiene I was blessed with straight teeth and never required the braces or headgear sported by some of my brothers. Your own condition (I assume it’s lockjaw”?) sounds as intimidating as TMJ!

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      1. I am glad I dropped Grape Nuts from my diet for good then! They were very satisfying in yogurt or with milk as cereal. You were lucky to never have braces or headgear … now it is easy to get braces with Invisalign, but if your brothers are older than you, they probably had the same kind of braces that wrapped around each tooth, not just glued on top of the tooth. Once a month they tightened the wires and even eating a banana was difficult. Mom made mushy meals for a day or two each month. The orthodontist said I likely moved my mouth a certain way and locked the top to the bottom (after he finally believed me I had not been eating caramels or sticky candy, something he warned all his patients to avoid).

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    1. Easter may need a sprint to the finish, but who knows? One of my LEGO-building rules is to never look ahead, either in the bags of pieces themselves or in the instructions. Perhaps I’ll be able to get through four or five bags next week instead of three!

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  6. My Dad liked Black Jack gum… which is yucky… in my opinion… but you do you, boo. Me? I liked the red Dentyne. I don’t chew gum anymore because of the chemical sweeteners in them. Ugh.

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    1. Gum is definitely stuck in my past for good. Even healthy versions (which I’m sure exist now) wouldn’t interest me. On the other hand, licorice is welcome in any size or shape as long as it’s the authentic “red” or “black” flavor.

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  7. Yes, gum is something I did in childhood and not that much really. Sure I took the free stuff the barber handed out, but if I was spending my own money, I’d buy lifesavers instead. I really liked the mint lifesavers.

    I’d hate to drop anything inside that — looks hard to get anything out of that.

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    1. If Life Savers weren’t so dated they’d earn a blog post of their own. I certainly consumed my share of rolls (mostly “Wild Cherry”). And yes, it was a jaw-drop when those pieces fell inside the cathedral. Didn’t occur to me how difficult it would be to rescue them. I’ll proceed with more caution from now on.

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  8. Okay, yikes about the plastics. Also, never heard of TMJ. Glad I didn’t get it from my years of gum chewing. Sorry you did. Nowadays it would be the Grape Nuts that would give it to me.

    The building continues to grow! Can’t wait to see what you build next. A Millennium Falcon, perhaps? 🙂

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    1. No, no Star Wars LEGO for this builder. I prefer the Architecture series instead. I think I’ll take a much needed break after the cathedral is fully erected.

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  10. Wow, Notre Dame is so detailed and coming together beautifully. Glad you included the number of hours you’ve put into it. Re: plastics – We get a lot from food bags in our fridge and freezer. I recently moved to glass containers for items in my fridge as much as possible. I found a fun retro color set of them in different sizes.

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  11. We’ve used plastic cups, Tupperware containers, plastic bags in the plastic lunch boxes–the list goes on and on. At my stage of life, I’m not sure it would do much good to switch to glass and metal! / The cathedral is looking great! After all the hard work you did on the inside, can you readily see in there to appreciate those details?

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    1. The cathedral is looking closed in already, Nancy. I guess for the sake of a realistic model they don’t give you an easy way to view the interior. You have to enjoy the detail as you’re building it! I do wish the roof could be removed. At least I won’t be interrupting the church services taking place inside 😉

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