Chewing Gum Removal

My mother is a very complex woman. While I was growing up I did not realize how ahead of her time she was. Now that I am a working mother I realize that she is truly remarkable. I grew up on a dairy farm. My parents did not have enough land to make a decent living out of farming so they both worked outside of the home as well. My mother began working when I was in first grade. This was before the time when it was common for married mothers to be working. She worked full time plus planted a large garden and helped with the chores and field work. She always seemed to have time to help out us kids when we needed her.

Mom was a very good homemaker. She was a wonderful cook and was able to do laundry in a way that kept our clothes looking like new. She also was great at household tips. She knew how to clean and remove stains from everything. She became an expert at chewing gum removal. My brother loved gum. He still chews a great deal of gum as an adult. As a child he was quite careless of how he discarded it when he was done. It seemed like it was a weekly occurrence that mom was faced with chewing gum removal from some place in the house. My brother loved to sit on the floor to watch television. He would take his gum out of his mouth to save while he ate something else, and many times forget about it. Another family member would end up stepping on it and there would be gum on socks and carpet. Mom found that the easiest method for chewing gum removal was to harden it by rubbing an ice cube over it. Once it was hard she would pick at it with a tweezers until she would have it removed from the surface of where it was stuck.

My mother was a very patient woman, however once my brother was in his early teens she made him clean up his own gum mess. She showed him how to remove the gum using the ice and tweezers. She also used his love of gum as a punishment. If he did something wrong part of his consequence was to go without gum for a period of time. The other day I had to laugh when his wife was telling me that she had to through away one of their rugs because he had gotten gum on it. I guess he never learned the lesson of how to be responsible with chewing gum.

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