Grandma's Gum/Milk Reduce, Reuse, Recycle System

The ancient chewing gum post by @juanmiguelsalas made me remember a quick story:

My grandmother Deloris has born in 1918 in a small farming community in Nebraska. She was twelve years old when the Great Depression hit and I believe the hardship she faced during that time made that period the most formative time in her life. It must have been bad, because even seventy years later, after a lifetime of prosperity, she refused to waste the slightest bit of food or buy oranges because she viewed them as a luxury item, only for special occasions such a treat in a Christmas stocking.

She often watched my younger brother and I while my mom was at work. As kids, we often chewed bubble gum at her house and at lunch, instead of wasting it by spitting it out before eating a meal, she would have us place our gum in our cups of milk, then when we finished it, our gum would be waiting for us at the bottom of the cup so that we could retrieve it and resume chewing. "Wouldn't want to waste perfectly good gum."

As anyone with kids knows, they don't always cooperate and drink all of their milk. Grandma hated waste so much that if you didn't finish the whole glass she would put it away in the refrigerator until next time you came over, then she would take it out, add some fresh milk to top it off, then re-serve it to you.

You may recognize the flaw in her gum/milk "reduce, reuse, recycle" system. Whenever you sat down for lunch at Grandma's house for lunch on a non-gum-chewing day and she served you a tall glass of cold milk, you might reach the bottom of that glass and find a big wad of gum staring at you, with only a 50% chance that it was originally yours.

Thanks Grandma for taking good care of us, raising us right, and going through hard times to make your children's lives better. With all the lessons you taught us came the little tip that pre-chewed gum won't hurt you a bit.