Cripes-a-mighty, if there’s one skill you should have mastered by the time you reached puberty, it’s eating in polite company.
I had the extremely unfortunate experience of having to have a conversation with a guy who was wolfing down candy (Skittles, I think it was) as though he had not taken in sustenance of any kind in a week. Between the smacking, the chewing, the little grunting noises he made while he was chewing (my hand to Og, it’s the truth) and the gasping for air between chews, it was almost impossible to pay attention to what he was saying. And it wasn’t a little bag of Skittles from the vending machine, either, it was a huge bag, and he just kept throwing handful after handful after handful in to his gaping maw. The great shame of it was he was talking about something interesting, but it was actually kind of hard to understand him, and maddening to wait through long pauses while he masticated, mouth open, giving me a front-row view of the technicolor mash, until he could swallow part of it, say a few words, and reach into the bag for more candy, and throw in the new to join the half-chewed. Ugh!
And then I ended up sitting next to this woman who was eating potato chips. I was thinking, man, are those some super-crispy pototo chips, or is she—oh my pity’s sake, she’s just chewing with her mouth open. crunchcrunchcrunchcrunchrustlecrunchcrunchcrunchcrunchrustlecrunchsmackcrunchcrunchrustlecrunchsmackcrunchcrunchcrunch ARGH! Once again, huge bag. It went on and on.
I don’t want to see your half-mashed food in your mouth. I don’t want to listen to your teeth grinding it up. I don’t want to watch your lips flap around, glistening with saliva and flecks of food, as they make disgusting smacking noises. CHEW WITH YOUR MOUTH CLOSED.
Is it a symptom of families no longer sitting down at the table and eating together that people don’t know how to have a conversation and eat at the same time? Or do I just have the misfortune of spending my time around inconsiderate slobs? “I could take small bites and chew with my mouth closed in between sentences, but that would mean a) shutting up some of the time and b) not gulping down food like a starved hyena all the time.”
And extra bonus points for people who chew with their mouth open while on the phone. Um, it’s okay - I’ll call you back when you’re done eating. Here’s a little hint - when you’re talking on the phone, the other person can hear EVERYTHING your mouth is doing - even sucking on a cigarette - in glorious technicolor.
There’s a man i have to work with (luckily only on Mondays) who chews with his mouth open and SLURPS everything!! And i do mean everything. Ever heard or seen someone slurp a cracker? Or even a fucking muffin!?! When i first started working here i didn’t believe it when the other people told me. I was wrong. It’s disgusting listening to his lips smack together. And if he has ribs or soup or even pasta, i leave the room and walk around the floors for the next 30 minutes until the mastication has ceased.
And he knows he isn’t allowed to eat with us during lunchtime either–at least he can take a hint.
My own dear grandma does this, and there’s no point in saying anything about it because she’s not the sort who takes well to change, bless her heart. I just take care to avoid sitting next to her at restaurants or family gatherings, because there’s no way I can swallow anything while listening to that.
She also “smacks” while talking…where another person might use a verbal placeholder such as “uh…”, she makes that nasty sound of her tongue peeling off the roof of her mouth. It amazes me sometimes that she’s been allowed to live as long as she has.
You may be right about this. I recall, as a child, having to be told repeatedly by my parents at the dinner table not to chew with my mouth open. Eventually I caught on (I hope—if you ever see me chewing with my mouth open, kick me, okay?)
This is me during the month of April, when my allergies kick in. Totally blocked up.
So I take bites that are the right size that I can chew and swallow while holding my breath, or I open my mouth very slightly (and not in anyone’s view).
Just because I can’t eat like a civilized person for one month of the year doesn’t mean anyone else should have to suffer watching me.
When we were teens, my brother was an open-mouth chewer and a slurper of liquids. Witnessing him breakfasting on cornflakes was enough to put me in a rage for the entire morning. My former stepson was another one; with a bag of Fritos® he could provoke Ghandi to violence.
Open-mouth chewing should be immediately punished with a Singapore-style flogging. One stroke of the rattan for each crunch and two strokes for each wet smacking noise.
One of my roomies is a 25 year old girl that reads every impressive piece of literature that she can (Emerson, Shakespear, etc), she studies Audrey Hepburn and says she wants to live in Rome or Paris someday, she watches movies with Lauren Bacall and Bogart. She prisses around in full makeup, high heels, and dresses just to pump gas…
All of this she does, only so she can brag about it among men that she hopes to impress.
Yet she chews food like a cow chews cud! (even on dates with said men)
We asked her to stop and told her it was disgusting and she cannot understand our request? I mean she does not beleive us or something? “That is just how I CHEW!” She barked at us.
Fine, but all the Turner Classic movies in the world cant give you class when you eat with your smacking, gape of a gaw wide open.
My sister does this open-mouth chewing thing, and she does the random extra-long smacks in the middle of chewing so that we can all tell just how much she is enjoying her food.
It’s so disgusting to see it all churning around in there, that I find it difficult to eat anything when she is also eating. She always does it, no matter where she is, and what’s worse is that I used to get yelled at for suggesting that she chew with her mouth closed.
Not only would my parents not correct her, but I got in trouble for saying that it was rude and not at all appealing to look at her churned up food.
OK, I understad the allergy/stuffed nose thing. Having spent 10 days once with a mile of gauze stuffed in my nose, I remember that time distinctly as the time when I lost 10 pounds from not wanting to/couldn’t eat without choking to death from trying to swallow and breathe at the same time.
But the habitual open mouth chompers? Pet Peeve. It sounds like a cat licking it’s ass.
There is a KFC TV commercial being aired over here at the moment . It shows three women in a call-centre singing away ( and answering customers) while their mouths are full of food. One of the most disgusting sights imaginable.
I cannot stand the sound of people eating; it is the most unnerving, disgusting thing on the planet. Those nasty Carl’s Junior commercials with people eating like pigs? I leave the room. People smacking popcorn in the movies? I leave (well, that’s why I never go). People in class who decide to snack (no, not on something quiet, but CHIPS!) in class receive dirty looks.
Bah! Back in my day* I would get hit upside the head for talking with my mouth open. My mom would try to trap me: she’d wait for me to take a bite, ask me something, and wait for me to answer. If I answered with a mouth full of food-- SMACK! I learned pretty quick.
My dad, not the most adult of men, would actually mimic us chewing with our mouths open at the table. It was very disgusting. Now, Dad has no teeth and chews with his mouth open anyway. And wonders why no one will eat across from him at the table.
And note: if you are EVER interviewed, radio or TV, and do that thsssth sucking-your-teeth sound, I will hunt you down and mock you in the street for the dog you are.
Oh yeah, it’s nice to see in the media. There was a commercial for a high fibre pasta on here for a while, and it was some troglodyte telling his wife there was no way he was going to eat that crap (meanwhile she’s feeding it to him). Delicious irony, I tells ya!
And he is SHOVELLING this stuff into his mouth and talking around it. I left it on long enough to find out the brand, then turned it off. And now I don’t buy their pasta.
Here’s another one; load up your fork with so much food that getting it into your mouth requires a combination of sheer brute force, grappling with the lips and tongue, plus inhalation and sucking - floff, floff, floff, smack,slurp, floff, smack, chomp, smack.
I’m not so bothered by the food thing, though it IS gross. What I really hate is when people scrape thier utensils against their teeth while eating. GAH! It makes my teeth hurt just hearing it.