Vegan Gum

I have a bad habit of forgetting to check the expiration date on some things. It's not that I'm trying to hold on to items for longer than they are useful, it's just that I forget that they're there.

For example, I used to keep some allergy meds in my backpack back when I was going to the office. It wasn't that I needed them all the time, but I didn't want to take a stroll outside and then spend the rest of the day being unfit to be around people. So, I took a precaution by keeping some meds on me. However, I didn't need them very often, so they just sort of sat there for months. And then the Mild Wife would notice a long time after that, and exclaim that I had expired allergy medicine. You get the idea.

The same was true for a pack of gum that I used to keep in my lunch bag. It was there mostly as a precaution when I was packing lunch and bringing it to the office. I didn't have pungent foods for lunch very often, so it mostly sat there unused. From what I understand, gum doesn't technically expire, but you can definitely tell if you've popped a piece of "old" gum into your mouth. It's tough instead of pliant, and it's not a pleasant experience.

Well, now that the Mild Wife and I are working from home, this is less of a concern. We can generally keep an eye on things, and replenish them when necessary. The gum is a perfect example of this; we don't chew gum very often, so when we finish the last piece, we know that we don't have any left. Given this state of affairs, we decided to order some gum from one of our favorite pandemic retailers, Amazon. We didn't really care too much what brand we got, we just wanted gum.

In the end, we ordered this item:

It wasn't a brand we were familiar with, but it's gum, for crying out loud. We just wanted something that we could chew and didn't have the consistency of dry rubber. It was a reasonable enough price, too.

The first time we went to have some, though, we realized that this was a very different type of gum. Instead of being wrapped in in sheets of paper, the gum came in these little pellets. There were little pieces of paper in a separate container that you could use to dispose of the finished product, but the packaging was very different than the "mainstream" ones that we've seen before. It was a little surprising the first time.

At one point, inspiration struck, and I ended up joking that we'd accidentally purchased the "vegan gum." Yup, we were rocking the all-natural, gluten-free, organic gum with environment-friendly packaging (I have no idea how much of that is actually true, but I'm guessing more than half). The joke drew a quick chuckle from the Mild Wife, but this product has effectively become that in my mind. It shall now and forever be known as the vegan gum, as far as I'm concerned.

Who knew that a simple purchase would lead to a lifetime branding of a product?