I have a specific memory of youth group summer camp. It’s something that crosses my mind entirely more often than it should.

It’s a memory of riding the church bus during the hours long trek to get to whatever tick-infested campground in which we were to lodge for a week.

It’s a memory of this kid falling asleep on the bus. We might have been fourteen or fifteen at the time. My friend thought it would be funny to take the chewed-up gum from her mouth and place it into the kid’s open mouth as he slept.

A transfer of ownership under duress.

On some level it was funny, if anything because it was an entertaining notion. An experiment brewed from boredom as we passed the endless, flat Midwestern fields of corn.

When he awoke in his bus seat instinctively chewing away, it took him a few seconds to register he had someone else’s ABC gum in his mouth. The culprit was pinpointed, and we all thought it would be just a passing goof.

A good ol’ church bus shenanigan to be forgotten like so many other innocent gags and silly spoofs tossed to the breeze.

In an unexpected twist, the kid stood up and announced his appalled horror in his victimhood in the scenario.

He stated that the gum joke was more offensive to him than when his father left him.

I think about that quite a bit.

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