b u b b l e . g u m

Those were the lyrics of my three year old self's song; I had learned it from two older girls --sisters-- at my babysitter's house. 

(I fully understand the appeal of teachig a little kid to say something borderline inappropriate, so I can't really blame them. My cousin Shelbey, who was, for a time, the youngest of our group, used to be able to speak in this great creepy voice, halfway between a gremlin and an evil henchman; my cousins, siblings andI used  to coach her to say things like "I'm going to run you over with my tractor" or "I'll cut you up into little pieces and hide you in the walls". We found this endlessly amusing.)

For whatever reason, I loved this disgusting song. My grandmother would despair of me singing it, asking in a sweet voice "Samantha, isn't there something else that you would like to sing for Gramma?"; nope, I knew what I liked, and I liked Bubblegum

My grandparents once made an audio recording of me at that age, and it's there; my baby voice sings slowly, putting emphasis on noooooose and BUM and stretching out bub-ble-gum! (It's pretty adorable). I also sing Happy Birthday to my mum and my tiny voice rumbles progressively lower on "dear mommy".

I'm so grateful to have that evidence of my former self.

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There was another song, possibly by Sharon, Lois and Braham* about "sticky, sticky, sticky, sticky bubblegum".

I learned that lesson first hand the night when I decided to save a piece of chewed up gum by sleeping with it in my hand. Palming a wad of gum seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but needless to say, come morning my leg was covered in a sticky, pink mess. My mum threw me immediately into the bath, and I'll never forget the pain of trying to pick it off my skin.

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*This trio was a favourite of mine growing up. The first three things that come to mind are:

Being sick late at night and being allowed to lie up on the couch and watch tv; the one thing on for me was (maybe) a concert featuring Sharon, Lois and Braham in a train station.

The Elephant Show theme song.

The Halloween episode where the children went trick-or-treating in broad daylight and were given eggs and vegetables in lieu of candy; they had UNICEF boxes and seemed estatic about the whole situation (which as a child, made me sad).