Casual public spitting disgusts me. I look back over a lot of years and I can probably tell you the number of times I spit in public for no good reason. I ask, “what’s so horrible in your mouth that you’ve got to spit it out, with regularity, right there on the sidewalk?” Really, what do you put in your mouth, or what do you eat or drink, or what odd body chemistry plagues you?
I pose this question telepathically to all the spitters who walk the stinky corridor that is Mission St., between 5th & 6th streets, in downtown San Francisco. This stretch is particularly spitty. Lot of bums, lot of construction workers, lot of old Chinese darnstresses. Is it possible to have a hyperactive salivary gland, producing more than one can swallow? Is it merely bad upbringing, like not wiping your butt well enough to ward of anal crusties? Or calling girls bitches? Or chewing with your mouth open?
I don’t have the answer, but the answer must be found before I, in my dampest dreams, drown in a sea of saliva.