This is more disturbing than stepping in gum

I’ll give you a clue. It involves bare skin.

You can call me “Sweet Cheeks.” Or “Sticky Buns.” But don’t hold my past against me. Even if it is recent. And memorable.

My Tuesday at the gym started like any other. I hit the pool for some warm-up laps. Took a shower. Quickly changed into my spandex shorts and a top, grabbed my mat, and went to the exercise room for yoga.

Upon entering the room, I felt a cold spot on my upper leg.

“Hmmm. I must not have dried myself completely,” I thought, figuring a little, chilly wet spot might actually do some good when the first hot flash hit during class.

(It didn’t.)

At the end of class, I folded my mat, put away my blocks, slipped into my shoes, and grabbed a gym wipe when I walked past the canister on my way to the locker room.

I placed my belongings outside my locker and went to use the restroom, and that’s where I found something disturbing.

That “wet spot” I had felt had been a piece of chewed blue gum.

Ewww.

Blue gum had adhered along my yoga-stretched upper leg and my right “cheek” (and, no, I didn’t chose to turn the other cheek in this instance, thank you for asking). And, because I didn’t know the gum was present, the sticky blue substance had taken the opportunity to paste itself onto the toilet seat, too.

Actually, it had pasted me to the seat.

What to do?

I was in a stall that offered nothing but toilet paper (and toilet water, but I wasn’t going there). So I grabbed pieces of the thin paper and attempted to wipe away the gum — from my leg and cheeks, from the toilet seat, and from the yoga shorts. I was rewarded with white crumbs of paper and slightly less blue gum — or just blue gum mottled with toilet paper.

So I did what any other sensible female would do in this situation, I used my fingernail to scrape the gum from my flesh — and from the toilet seat. (And some people are afraid to sit on a public toilet!)

I had better luck with the toilet seat than my skin, plus it was rather difficult to see exactly where it was back there. I’m not a bloody owl with head-spinning powers.

Not wanting to get any more gum on my flesh or on the shorts, I plastered both with some dry tissue, then nonchalantly left the stall and returned to my locker.

(Oh, yes, I did remember to wash my hands on the way!)

Typically, I grab a gym wipe on my way out of yoga so I can use it to wipe my feet, since I’d already showered and my bare feet had made extensive contact with the gym floor during class.

But desperate times call for desperate measures — and this was a desperate time. Feet, be damned! My buttocks and leg demanded the wipe.

I secreted myself into a dressing room, where, with the guidance of the mirror, I worked on removing the gum, rubbing hard with the wipe. My skin went from blue to red, and that was good enough for me.

Of course, none of my usual gym buddies were witness to my scrape with the mysterious wad of gum (nor did I ask anyone for help scraping it away). I might have gone quietly into this good day, except for Tracy.

She was at the counter doing her hair, and she asked me how I was doing.

I burst out laughing. Then I burst out with my shameful story.

“I can’t wait to read the blog post about this one,” she responded, as she too laughed. “You can’t make this stuff up.”

At the time, I thought my husband must have left a piece of chewed gum in his pocket, because we all do that, right?

My prevention plan going forward was to wash his clothing in separate loads.

But he insists he didn’t do that — and the gum we chew is white, not blue.

Plus, I had washed my shorts inside out, hung them to dry on the line, turned them right-side out, and then folded them.

I think I might have noticed bright blue gum.

So now I know I did not have laundered blue gum adhered to my body but spit-riddled blue gum. Clinging. To. My. Flesh.

This is more disgusting than stepping in gum. Barefoot.

Did someone leave a wad of gum on the bench in front of my locker where I blindly sat in it? I was wearing a robe, so I don’t think so, as my bare buttocks never touched the bench. (I mean, I’m brave but not stupid.)

Did some evil person purposefully add a wad of blue gum to the inside of my spandex shorts? If so, how?

But, as Connie pointed out when I told her my tale of sticky blue woe, “A hundred bad days made a hundred different stories,” the lyrics from “100 Bad Days” we’ve heard (over and over and over) from the gym speakers.

The mystery remains; the disgust lingers; but with the help of Goo Gone, the blue gum, indeed, is gone.

And I’ve got a story to tell.