The Gum Tragedy

No one is perfect. Well, one of my obvious traits is that I am too reckless. I hope that I could be more detailed, but it was like my nature comes at some unpredictable moments.

It happened when I was in 5th grade in elementary school. My family moved in to another city. Therefore, I became a new student in Puspiptek ES, South Tangerang. Some of my new friends were nice to me, most of them were girls. But some of the boys sometimes made fun of me. They often yelled at me as I was a girl from another city and had a little bit trouble with the culture shock. In the previous school, it was allowed to bring girls magazine, of course the teachers were happy because we had an interest in reading and also we knew a lot about new issues, but it wasn’t allowed here to bring entertainment stuffs, including magazine as an entertainment book. Then, I got more trouble when I brought one. One of the boys found me reading it, and he started yelling at me and reported it to the teacher. Then I just felt like I wanted to move to any other schools but not this one. So here it is, one of the unforgettable experiences when I was there. But I must tell you first, this experience that I want to share with you basically not because of everyone’s fault but mine. You know, about being reckless.

One day, my mom bought me a new jacket. It was white, easily stretched and looked very cool. Well, I always like my mom’s taste, her taste never falls. That’s why I sometimes wear my mom’s clothes for some occasions. Her style is not like mothers, it is more like teenagers. That makes me sometimes feel embarrassed because my taste is not as cool as hers. From then on, I usually wore the jacket to school.

One morning, I went to school with my lovely jacket. As I walked in the corridor, many students had big pink bubble on his mouth. Soon after, the bubble popped, and stuck to their face. Well, at that time, one of the gum brands was very popular, because it was cheap and also gave a tattoo as a bonus. Many students bought one or more gums every day. They tried to blow it as big as they could. I also bought one, and started to hold a blow contest with my good friends. We held a contest day by day and of course I never won since I had not had any talents in blowing the bubblegum.

After the bubbles popped and the sweet completely gone. We had trouble to throw it to the dustbin. It was very sticky. We needed tissues or paper, or something to stick it to. Well, one of my friends never forgot to bring a pack of tissues for all us. But, not all of the students, some of students just stuck it to anywhere around them without considering the consequences of what they did. Because there were many gums stuck to some schools equipments, such as tables, chairs, even on the wall. Since, it became a habit at the school. I began to stop caring about the environment, and started to spit the gum anywhere whenever I was finished. The teacher was very angry at us once and insisted us to stop buying the gums.

Well, the consumers of the gum had decreased since then, but the environment of the school still had some sticky gums everywhere.

It was break time. After buying some of my favourite snacks and then leaving the canteen, my friends and I went to the ladies room. I was wearing that lovely white jacket then I took it off and left it on the washbasin. After a couple minutes, I went back to the washbasin and then gussied up. As I finished with the mirror and so my friends did, I put on my jacket and we went ahead to the class.

At the class, my friend noticed something on my jacket. “Hey, what is that on your jacket?” she said. “What? OH NO! A big gum stuck on my jacket” I shocked. I hastily tried to remove it from my jacket. But it was quite difficult. My friends tried to help, but some boys started to yell at me and my jacket. It was like I wanted to stick the gum on their faces. Finally, I took my jacket off, and put it on my bag.

Then I went home, and I grabbed the jacket. And guess what? The gum dried and more stuck to the jacket. I asked my maid’s help to remove it. With a knife, she successfully removed it. But unfortunately the gum left a big stain on my white jacket. The maid tried to remove the stain by washing it. But it looked like it was stained permanently. After doing some efforts to remove it, we gave up, since then I stopped wearing the jacket to school.

My mom wondered what exactly happened to the jacket, since I had begun not wearing it to school. Then, I explained to her about the gum tragedy. She was quite upset “You should mind your surroundings before you place something on some places!” she said. And yes, it’s not completely the one who stuck the gum’s fault. But it was mine. I was too reckless to mind my surroundings.

I had my lesson that day. I had to lose something special before I learned something important, there were to mind my surroundings and not to be reckless. And of course after chewing the gums, I have to stick it to the paper first and then throw it to the dustbin. No more sticking to the walls, chairs or tables because I don’t want to lose another my favourite stuff again. But, sometimes things are never same as we planned. I’m still reckless until now, but I try not to be too reckless. Like I said, no one is perfect.