Why I'd like to bazooka Joe.

There are three main reasons I would make a terrible baseball player. First of all, I am cowardly. I am afraid of being hit, by the ball or by other players. Second of all, I get hot easily and those uniforms do not seem appropriate for the summer months. Most importantly, I hate chewing gum and watching other people chew gum.

A lack of affinity for gum seems to be a deal-breaker in the world of baseball, where 50-year-old managers stuff their faces with enormous wads of Bazooka Joe like they're ten. Ah-no thank you.

If I had one wish, it might be that the world would come to a common understanding that chewing gum is gross. I realize I am in the minority on this one, but really, even people who chew gum must realize on some level that it is disgusting. Right? Don't you?

One time we were at a restaurant with my cousin who was about three at the time. She was taking forever to eat her hamburger. Finally she finished, so we walked down the street for ice cream. When we got there, we realized that she hadn't actually finished her dinner yet -- she'd been chewing on the same enormous bite of hamburger for twenty-five minutes. Just continuously chewing it as some insane act of three-year-old defiance. It was pretty inelegant.

Kind of like chewing the same piece of gum for a half hour.

I know I'm alienating a lot of your right now, so let me back myself up by telling you that Oprah agrees with me. Oprah. I once saw an episode of her show on which she confessed that, after she saw a dinner guest put his chewed-gum on the edge of his plate, she threw the plate in the garbage. She was so disgusted that she couldn't bear to potentially eat off the gum plate ever again.

See? I get that. I can't really afford to throw out one of my twelve dinner plates, but I get it.

The person most vexed by my staunch anti-gum policy is my husband, who I've forbidden to chew gum in my presence. He still does it from time to time, to prove I'm not the boss of him, but I make the experience so unpleasant I'm pretty sure he doesn't enjoy it. Because I'm mature.

Here's the thing: my husband is not a silent gum-chewer. He makes a lot of noise; and, on the whole, I don't tolerate mouth noises very well. Any kind of smacking, or squishy-saliva-type noises, turn my stomach. For example I hate it when you can hear people kissing in movies. Is that really necessary? I get it. They're kissing. Turn up the background music and let's move on.

So any time I hear someone moving their gum around their mouth, snapping it or popping it or whatever people do -- I can't bear it. I have to plug my ears or leave the room or make a subtle yet not-so-subtle face in hopes that they feel weird and stop doing what they're doing.

Because I'm mature.