TMI Thursday: The Kind of Girl Who … spits instead of swallowing

NTKOG #31: The kind of girl who, walking around her normal life, becomes so overwhelmed with the amount of saliva in her mouth that she hocks it up and deposits it directly on the sidewalk. THE SIDEWALK! Where some of us are trying to walk in flipflops, thanks, dude.

I am: a bit prim & prudish, it transpires, in the matters of Other People’s Fluids, accidental contact with.

I am not: even sure why people feel the need to let fly with this saliva situation. Am I just too dehydrated to see the appeal?!

The Scene: Wandering around Harvard Square in an Alice-in-Wonderland-ish blue dress and black kitten heels — an outfit in which I felt particularly feminine and un-lugie-hocking. I had packed up my book two bus stops in advance on the ride over and concentrated my full energy into cultivating a nice, thick mouthful of drool, and was now desperately stalking around in search of someone in front of whom I could spit that motha out.

Do not, incidentally, ever try this — walking around with a brimming mouthful of very warm saliva. I know it sounds terribly glamorous. But please just do not.

An old professor-looking dude and his wife prominaded haughtily past, she holding his arm, as though they were practicing to be extras in the sequel to Titanic. I made eye contact with them, glanced away for a moment, and casually ribboned my mouthful of spit into a nearby planter.

The woman moued with disgust, but neither said anything.

Next, I spit directly on the sidewalk, while walking toward a young, intellectual girl. She didn’t say anything for the last several steps of my approach, but in the split second we were side by side, muttered, “Gross!” Yeah, I wanted to tell her, it totally totally was.

Finally, I saved up a decent mouthful o’ hock and spat heartily while standing at a stop light near a young guy wearing basketball shorts and a jauntily skewed baseball cap. I glanced at him afterwards, but he stared impassively forward. After about thirty seconds of non-contact, the light turned green. As he began to stride forward, he glanced at me again, then spat with the kind of fluency of which I can only dream … right onto the top of my left foot. Poor aim? Revenge? Or have I been officially hazed and accepted into the secret society of street spitters?

The Verdict: Ew, gross, do not want. Many people didn’t notice this disgusting tic; the ones who did were obviously but not very vocally disgusted. This does not surprise me. The real question I hoped to answer with this trial, though, was the much darker one: Why the balls do people spit on the street?!

I attempted it wondering if I would feel some relief or joy or overwhelmingly positive reaction — afraid, perhaps, that trying out the forbidden act would open the floodgates, as it were — or else why would people do it? But I felt like nothing more than a slightly worse human being than the one who left my apartment this morning.

I’m a pretty averagely-hydrated dude, with a pretty average phleghm content, and yet not once have I ever been alarmed or flooded by the amount of fluid in my mouth. I mean, sure, I produce saliva, but I tend to swallow it, y’know, as the problem arises. WTF, SPITTERS?! Are you just procrastinating on swallowing? Are you all so obsessed with CSI that you run around leaving your DNA everywhere? Are you attempting a misguided protest against flipflop afficionados?

I hate everyone who has ever done this, ever.

Also, do be sure to come back tomorrow, because yesterday, moments after my spitting adventure, I experienced the friggin’ mother of all NTKOGs! A day I’ve been gearing toward my whole life, and yet still could not believe when it was finally happening to me. It’s an NTKOG miracle.

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This post submitted for the approval of the Midnight Soci–uh, I mean, the lovely LiLu, whose TMI Thursday post today is just as fluid-centric as mine, but doesn’t make me quite so misanthropic.

Tagged as: drool, etiquette, gross habits, hock, phleghm, saliva, so i'm pretty sure singapore has the right idea about the whole spitting in the streets issue, spitting, TMI Thursday, uncouth, you make me wanna vom