Gripe : Free Us From Gum-Blobbed Sidewalks

As my husband and I walked up the stone steps of the San Luis Obispo Mission early one beautiful morning, I noticed a nice-looking, well-dressed young man crouched down, scraping something from the stone. He appeared to be a curator or somesuch, getting ready for the day’s visitors and doing what needed to be done: painstakingly scraping up dirty gray and black blobs of gum that visitors had dropped or (dare we think it) thrown down on purpose.

It is enough to make a person agree with the president of Singapore, who has simply banned the import of gum. A radical, undemocratic measure but one that has a certain attraction.

Some days I would be willing to trade the freedom to buy and chew gum for the freedom from gum-blob-paved sidewalks, restroom floors, museum steps, bus floors, and gross, lumpy undersides of theater and bus seats.

It is sad to see the pitifully futile efforts of people like the man scraping up the mess, knowing that it will probably be twice as bad tomorrow.

Come on, “ladies and gentlemen,” throw your gum in a wastebasket, stick it on the wrapper or stick in your purse, your pocket or behind your ear. If there’s no alternative, do what your mother always told you never to do: Swallow it. It will not make your insides stick together. Believe me, I’ve done it dozens of times.

But don’t spit it on a public sidewalk for some hapless pedestrian to step in and maybe trip as it grabs her and breaks her stride while pulling her out of her shoes. What’s worse, it leaves an almost unremovable and totally nauseating glob. It’s worse than doggy doo--which at least comes off with water and fertilizes plants.