♥ Hubba Bubba

One of my sons didn’t have a girl friend until he was 17.  However, a little girl did ask him to be her special friend the first few weeks of first grade.   He told me that right when he got in the car.  I replied, “Oh, how sweet – that someone wants to be your friend.”  I knew life had definitely changed when he said, “She didn’t mean it that way, Mom.”

 “I have a crush,” the youngest one said after a soccer game in second grade.  It was very rare he ever mentioned admiring girls.    He spent the entire season trying to set her up to score, passing the ball to her directly in front of the goal.  She couldn’t convert!

  Another one admired one particular girl from age 4 to 8.  He’s is faithful . Then he admired another one for an entire year.  In the fourth grade, he put his courage to work and told her.  I believe she ran away screaming. 

 One little girl had a crush on another son in preschool.  It continued for awhile.  She always took such good care of him!   At a birthday party, he finally submitted and agreed to marry her.  Alas, their schools drew them apart – long distance relationships are so difficult! Sigh!  He “went out” with his best friend in the seventh grade and broke up because she was mad at him all the time.  He doesn’t like conflict.  I’m sure most of you understand that when you “go out” with someone, you’re not really going out.  Most of the time, you’re not really even talking.  I remember asking one of the boys once, “Does she know you’re going out?”  What’s a mom without a little humor?

 However, one son probably had a girlfriend in the hospital nursery.  He fell in love when he was 5.  He remained dazzled for a few years.  She moved away – Sigh!  Long distance relationships are so hard!  In fifth grade, he  “went out” with a girl for about four weeks – until Christmas when he gave her a little stuffed animal.  She promptly broke up with him.  She wanted to get back together around St. Valentine’s Day.  He was considering it, so he received the, “Fool-me-once-shame-on-you;-Fool-me-twice,-shame-on-me” lecture.   In his seventh grade year, I created the first of my very visual “relationship” lectures.  I call it “The Bubble Gum Lecture.”  It goes something like this:

 You are like a beautiful piece of Hubba Bubba .  (You might want to go to the following site just to get in the mood http://www.hubbabubba.com/hbw/index.do).  When you open that piece of Hubba Bubba, your nose is overcome with the full-bodied Grape, Berry, Watermelon, Island Punch, Strawberry, or the Outrageous Original scent.  You have expectations of what that piece of gum is supposed to do – all healthy and appropriate expectations, of course.  Keep in mind, that this piece of gum symbolizes you.  This is what you have to offer the girl that God made for you.

 As you get older, when friendships are made and then broken, you grieve—maybe not crying and sobbing, but getting angry and put out.  Then when you start “going out” with girls, every time you “break up,” your spirit grieves—your pride might be wounded; there’s hurt and anger involved.  As a result, every time you break up with a girl, you become like a piece of gum, a little more chewed up, more of your flavor chewed out, until you, the piece of gum, resembles the chewed up piece of gum under the O’Charley’s table. Ugh!  Yuck!

 What does this have to do with the pretty little girl God made for you to marry 10 years down the road?  Well, let’s say you were offering her your “gum”  (gum = heart).  Your heart has been pretty beat up—broken, let down.  Maybe you have a bad taste in your mouth because girls—too young to understand how to treat someone in a relationship—have not been faithful, treated you well, or maybe they just admired your dashing good looks.   Will you trust her?    Maybe you’ve lost your confidence, and you don’t feel valuable because girls haven’t treated you like you were valuable—only another notch on their boyfriend belt.  Maybe you didn’t treat the girls in your relationships well – they were just a notch on the girlfriend belt.

            Broken relationships turn people into chewed-up pieces of gum.  God has made a great gift for you—a girl who will be like a fresh, new piece of gum who will value you, adore you, and make you happier than you can imagine.  He also made you a great gift for her.  Don’t let your future wife down.  Imagine opening a box and finding a chewed up old piece of gum—Let her receive the wonderful, beautiful who piece of Hubba Bubba that you were created to be!