# It wasn't gum. I bite the inside of my cheeks sometimes. Not hard enough to draw blood or anything, just enough to feel the pressure...and in middle school, with all the changes and extra stress that comes with that, I started biting the inside of my cheeks more, apparently. One day in social studies, my teacher looked right at me in the middle of a lecture and told me to spit out my gum. (Gum was forbidden in the school.) Confused, I told him I didn't have any gum. He didn't believe me and insisted that I spit it out. I wasn't really sure how to explain that I'd been biting the inside of my cheek, so I just repeated that I didn't have any and I opened my mouth to show him. Frustrated, he muttered something like, "Well, next time you'll have detention," or some similar threat. I'm not sure if I just stopped doing that in his class/in school or what, but I still remember it to this day as one of the first times I ever *almost* got in trouble.