A recent Dentyne Gum commercial on TV claims that the average amount of time we spend kissing in our lifetime is 20,000 minutes!  Who keeps track of how much time they spend kissing?  Who is qualified to know this or make such a claim?  I am stupified and bewildered at this boldly bizarre commercial for chewing gum.  Wow, I am neither gullible nor a disbeliever, but this claim is just off the charts, nuts!

I WISH!  Kissing has always been a favorite passtime of mine, since I was very young.  Beginning with kissing my mom and dad daily and advancing to kissing my siblings, cause they made me, when I wasn't teasing or taking their food and toys from them.  I was first born so this behavior came naturally.

Kissing dolls, stuffed animals, real animals, but not on the lips, yuck and god forfbid, kissing boys.  Not till much later.  Does kissing your uncle count?  Yes, he was a real uncle with a big, tickly mustache and he kissed us on the lips and gave us $2 bills every Christmas.  OK, I can see where kissing goodnight, if that counts, could add up considerably.  Sometimes the one last kiss at bed time lasted by conning mom and dad into several kisses to stall the inevitable light going out and trying anything to stay up a little later.  Once it was dark and they shut the door there was no going back for another kiss goodnight.

Spin the bottle in Jr. High.  That counts.  Lame excuse for kissing but it all adds up.  Took way too long to get your turn and trying to spin it just right so you got to kiss the boy you thought was cute or whatever.  Or it landed on a girl and you had to kiss her anyway.  Those were the rules.  No do overs.  Dumb game but we all did it anyway.  More kissing,  because you had to do it or be left out of the game.

So, I can see how the much anticipated "making out" in high school while parked somewhere secluded and dark could add up big time.  In the thousands for sure.  That was an era of serious serial kissing.  That is where I lost count, for sure.  There were the boys that couldn't kiss at all and were gross and then there were the few who kissed so well that you never wanted to stop, even if it meant being grounded for coming in after curfew.  Kissing trumped parental punishment.  It was so worth it.

Now, besides loving kissing in a big way, I have always been a habitual gum chewer.  Yes, still am.  Love gum about as much as I love kissing.  And if you knew how much I have loved kissing all my life, especially teaching the right person to kiss the way I like it the best, well, you'd just know.  They go hand in hand, really.  If the kissing is really good, I will throw away my gum.  But not at first.  If it's bubble gum, my favorite, all the pop has to be gone.  I love the taste of peppermint chicklets while kissing.  I'm wierd that way.  Or is that, wired that way.  Either way, I like kissing to taste good.  Gum ensures that.  "Kissasbly sweet," hence, the Dentyne gum and kissing commercial.  But I do not like Spearmint flavor.  Never have.

Moving on, college wasn't as good in the kissing department.  Some of my best kissing was definitely achieved in high school.  What can I say?  I went to an all girl's Catholic college.  See my problem?  Closest school with boys was West Point Academy.  Good Lord, those boys were learning to be soldiers and clean weapons, while maintaining an A- average or they were out!  They were wound so tight that they would force kissing immediately at the beginning of the date.  Forget going out to eat or go to a movie.  Cadets commence with harsh, tongue in the mouth kissing and heavy petting, all in the first five minutes.  And I had a VW bug in college, so trying to sprawl out in the bug with a stick shift in the middle was pretty much not so great.  Don't even think about the back seat of a Beatle with a 6'3" cadet and a 5'7" blonde.  Doesn't work.  Hate to count the kissing in college.  It wasn't memorable in that way.  Just hard to forget.

 Then after college there were those three years as a TWA flight attendant and some resultant miscellaneous kissing in European ports of many flavors.  There was that.  Not so much to break any records so later reunited with the high school sweetheart and quit flying to get married and start making babies.  Defintitely some more pivotal kissing in the baby making efforts.  Mostly effortless, actually, because we learned to perfect the fine art of kissing  together in our Junior year of H.S.  He was likely the person I kissed the most in my entire life.  I never got sick of kissing him until we got divorced.  Big league kissing came to a halt there for a while.

Let's just fast forward and take a chance on elder kissing.  OK, no!  Just kidding.  Not quite there yet.  Kissing is still topping the charts because, believe it or not, my hubby and I really like kissing each other, though not as much as when we were dating.  Had to expect that, right?  But when you start thinking about all the time you spend smooching your children from birth till present, especially when they are giggling babies, it really amounts to something impressive.  The numbers really soar when you become a grand parent and get to give all those silly smooches and belly farts all over again.  Cha ching!  Big numbers now.

K I S S I N G !!!

No better pass time, really, if you can find someone you love to kiss into infinity.  That's what I figure it must take to get to 20,000 minutes of KISSES in one lifetime.

It's worth a shot!

And I will be kissing those grand babies till my last dying kiss!

(SWAK)