Stuff Weird People Like

I’ll just come right on out and say it: if you like to spit, and you don’t see anything wrong with spitting in public, you are weird. Unless you are an annoyed camel or an enraged cat, there is no excuse for spitting.

This may sound strange to some of you, but other people do not like to step in whatever mucus, spittle, slaver, sputum, phlegm, or other discharge that you feel the need to expectorate on the sidewalk. In Singapore, the penalty for spitting in public is a $600 fine, which starts to sound pretty good if you’ve stepped in someone else’s spit a few times.

Spitting was an accepted part of everyday life back in the Middle Ages, but then again, so was the plague. Atypical pneumonia, tuberculosis, and other fun diseases can be transmitted by spitting. Spitting generally fell out of favor after the Middle Ages, until chewing tobacco became popular in the 19th century, when men would gather together to watch each other spew dark brown juice into spittoons. Good times, good times.

“America is one long expectoration” — Oscar Wilde on his first visit to the United States, 1882.

Chewing tobacco fell out of favor in the United States after the 1918 flu epidemic and concerns about hygiene. Also, no one wanted to clean the spittoons.

All was quiet on the spitting front until baseball players started it up again. Somehow chewing tobacco became a baseball tradition, a tradition that features not only constant spitting, but also nicotine addiction and cancer. Some players have switched to chewing sunflower seeds, which is healthier, but which also results in players continuously spitting out the shells.

A baseball game is basically one long spitting marathon. Televised games feature lots of close-ups of players in the dugout, so we get to see details of each player’s personal chewing and spitting techniques. There are the slow chewers,  the big juicy spitters, the spastic dribblers, and the bubble-gum blowers. It’s just one long oral fixation. Dude, I think you have a sunflower seed stuck to your chin.

Why do baseball players chew all this stuff? To relieve tension? If you have a guaranteed multi-million dollar contract, just exactly what do you have to be tense about? Whether to buy the penthouse condo or the suburban mansion? What pieces of bling best match your uniform? Whether or not you can get the Escalade in that special color you wanted?

Thanks mainly to baseball, spitting has made a big comeback. Somehow the following message has been delivered: if you are a boy or man, and you play sports, you are supposed to spit. Even if you do not play sports, you are supposed to spit. If you are with a group of your friends, even if you are not playing a sport, you are supposed to spit. If you are by yourself, you are supposed to spit. If you have a Y chromosome, you are supposed to spit.

Trust me on this, guys. Okay, don’t trust me — check out this post on Yahoo Answers. Women do not like men who spit. They think it’s gross. A total turn-off.

Anecdotally, I knew a guy in college who chewed tobacco all the time. He used to carry an empty 32 ounce plastic Sprite bottle with him everywhere he went in which to spit. The chewing and spitting in the green plastic bottle was bad enough to begin with, and things just got worse as the bottle filled up. Needless to say, he did not have a steady girlfriend.

Unfortunately, it looks like spitting is here to stay. That doesn’t make it right. If you like spitting, you are not only rude, but also WEIRD.

The Maassai people of Africa spit on one another as a form of greeting and farewell. So in closing, I’d just like to leave you with this: “phbbtttttt…ptui!”