Chewing Gum

Well, dear blog readers, today I have been contemplating certain habits you try to break as a kid, and other habits you pick up in adulthood. For example: I don't know about most of you, but perhaps there is someone somewhere who can relate. I haven't chewed gum in a long time due to my jaw locking up a few years ago and taking a few days to go back to normal. Every once in a while, though, someone will offer me a piece at work. I get the overwhelming urge to swallow it. Why? Is it that I haven't chewed gum in so long that everything in my mouth must go? I used to be a champion gum-chewer as a kid--I think my sister and I had contests to see who could chew a piece of gum the longest. (Within a given day, of course. Mom would never have had us go to bed with gum; we had one too many incidents of gum-in-the-long-hair and solvents such as PB and gasoline when we were little.) I think we may have gotten this concept from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I never had the urge to swallow gum as a kid, so why do I find the urge to do that now vs. running to a trash can 10 minutes after chewing the stuff in order to spit it out vs. actually swallowing it? Is that just bizarre or what?