The gum effect

This weekend, I was fortunate to hear one of the funniest stories in the history of funny stories. I laughed so hard when I heard it that I turned into a giggling limp noodle and almost fell out of my chair. In a way, it is a type of schadenfreude story, so there was a small part of me that felt guilty for laughing the way I did. As you will see, though, this story belongs straight out of a movie. This is a story as told to me by my friend (in the interest of anonymity, let’s call him Tom). So here goes.

The Delts threw a highlighter bus party last Friday night. It was a huge shindig, complete with glow sticks and black lights and loud music and dancing. Tom, a Delt, was having a great time, dancing and fist-pumping like a frat star. All of a sudden, a girl catches his eye. She is beautiful and perfect, and he is instantly attracted to her. He asks her to dance. She says yes. Things are going swell as they are dancing in the midst of the fist-pumping crowd. Tom is ecstatic to have found this wonderful girl. And she is a great dancer. What could go wrong?

There they were, dancing the night away, when the girl brushes her hair to the side of her neck. Tom seizes this opportunity. Carpe diem! Matching the raunchiness of the rest of the dancing couples, Tom goes to kiss the girl’s neck. There are only two problems with this scenario: not all the girl’s hair has been pushed to the side, and Tom is chewing gum.

Gum, which, as he opened his mouth, became irreversibly stuck in this pretty girl’s hair.

At first, Tom tries not to panic. He can just pull the gum out, and she will never know. When that doesn’t work, Tom begins to panic. The gum is stuck. It isn’t coming out. He doesn’t know what to do, and he doesn’t want to tell the beautiful girl what has happened. He has only just met her, and there would be no recovery from a gum-in-hair incident.
The girl keeps dancing while Tom is panicking. Eventually, the girl tells him that she is going to go to the restroom but will be right back. “Don’t go anywhere,” she says. Tom knows that she will realize soon enough what has happened. Tom is super bummed, because he likes her. But Tom, knowing a recovery is not possible, slinks away into the darkness of the black lights and glow sticks and loud music and never sees the pretty girl again.

The end.

Author’s notes: I feel bad for my friend, but I couldn’t help laughing at this situation. It is something that belongs in a comedy film. I hope you enjoyed it hopefully as much as I did but definitely more than Tom did.