One of my earliest memories was chewing through a teething ring. I don’t know if it was my curiosity as to what the liquid was on the inside, or if I figured the goal of the toy was to destroy it. Either way, my little pearly whites made it to the middle of the Muppet Babies teething ring, and I found that it was not stuffed with water, but rather an embittered chemical liquid.

I couldn’t get my mind off of the plastic, though…

The oh so chewable skeleton of the teething ring fed me with the craving to chew on all sorts of non-food things around the house. Mom threw the popped teething ring away immediately, scared that the liquid seeping out of the middle was poisonous. I had been looking forward to ingesting the rest of it, but alas…

I eventually turned on the chair I sat in during dinner. Mom didn’t want me chewing on the chairs, obviously, but she wasn’t about to throw the whole thing out because of a little gnawage on the back. We still have it, and the teeth marks on the rim of the chair run pretty deep into the wood.

It wasn’t until I found myself peeling the straw wrapper off of a juice box and chewing on the glue underneath, that I realized I’m pathetic. I wondered, Does anyone else do this? Other people have to chew on some glue every now and then…

No.

No they don’t.

Goats do that. My behavior was goat like. No one wants to admit goat traits in themselves, but I had a pretty easy time with it. Do I want to stop chewing on that chair? Nope. Is it weird that I look forward to chewing on the birthday candles more than the cake? Of course it is. Am I going to stop? Absolutely not.

I was watching TLC’s “My Strange Addiction” a month or two ago and I saw this profile story on a lady that couldn’t stop putting dishwasher powder on her teeth, and another that was addicted to ventriloquism, speaking her every word through a puppet that she carried everywhere. I thought to myself, what an idiot, eating dish soap, and also I will run if I ever see the puppet girl. What freaks.

     Craving dish soap is different than chewing on glue sticks like gum, right?

Wrong.

It isn’t.

So we had these crayons at our house from the dollar store. Normally, I wouldn’t chew on crayons because Crayola just fall apart in your mouth, but the dollar store crayons were made from candle-like wax and they melted beautifully. I chewed through a box of those things like it was my job. Every now and then I would find a little gritty thing embedded in the crayon wax. I had no second thoughts as to what those were, but then my mom caught me chewing a light pink crayon one day. She first pried it from my hands and then read the back of the box for “ingredients” and poison warnings. Turns out the little gritties were chunks of lead.

That box of crayons, and any resembling it disappeared from the craft closet. Glue sticks were on strict watch at the top shelf (she still used those, no need to throw them away). Juice boxes were replaced by Capri Suns who’s straw wrappers were stuck on with tape. I watched, after every birthday, as she threw every single one of the candles out. My world came to a crashing halt.

So sixth grade comes around, and we are at an orientation night. I sat next to Trent, a boy that had been in my first classroom.

“Hi,” I smiled.

“Hey…aren’t you the girl that ate crayons?”

“…what?”

“Yeah, you ate your crayons under your desktop! I remember you!”

I shook my head, and sank further into my chair. I’d like to say the sheer shame from that moment was enough to make me stop chewing…

Yeah. We’ll go with that.

Luciana, 23 (remembering age 5…and beyond)