The Gum Chewing Girl

Every few days on the GO train ride home, there's this lady -- always well dressed, sophisticated looking and offering a polite smile to those around her -- who sometimes sits near me and has this annoying habit of chewing gum in this loud, utterly annoying fashion. The first time I heard her, a few weeks ago, I actually looked around for the kid whom I thought must be making this noise and was suprised to see it was this lady.

Yesterday, while waiting to get off the train at Aldershot, she was standing behind me on the stairs, smacking away in such a way that I'm suprised spittle didn't land on the back of my head. As I stood there, listening to her visciously and loudly attack the piece of gum the way ultra conservatives in Canada are attacking the idea of equal and fair same-sex marriages, I held back the obscure mixture of laughter and disdain and let the following poem I remember reading in a high school yearbook, flow through my head. It went something like this:

"The gum chewing girl and the chud chewing cow
They're so much alike, yet different some how
I try to reminder, yes, I think I know now
It's the thoughtful expression on the face of the cow"