The Secret Life of a Spitball

It wasn’t a bad sort of day. It was the kind of day which inspires you to be glad that you aren’t an electrophorus electricus, the electric eel, which isn’t an eel, but who cares? (Even though it’s like saying an elephant is actually a mutant sheep)- erm, oh yes, the non-eel… The male has to build a nest out of his own saliva, which must be quite draining. Besides having to swim around intimidating other fish and amphibians with his 500 volts of electricity, he has to go home to his unfinished foundations and drool all over the place like an army recruit in a strip club.

Spit is very useful. It is well known to mothers across the globe that genetically-linked saliva will, when added to a tissue, act as a better cleaning agent than formally-bought store products in the task of cleaning a child’s face, but only when the mother is sitting in the front seat of the car, and she realizes that ill will be thought of her should she allow her grubby-cheeked cherub to enter the public eye.

It’s good for intimidating bullies- the old sideways-hawk is enough to wrest the biggest oaf on the block into submission, right? Well, no, but that doesn’t deter teenagers from doing it as part of a pre-fight ritual. Because everyone knows getting punched in the mouth when it is full of saliva is no joke, it could shoot out your nose and mess up your black T-shirt, which you insisted Mom dye because it used to say ‘I Ran in the Wholesome as Apple Pie Fun Run’, and that didn’t fit in with your sense of style…

Lastly, it’s a good thing babies can’t acquire interior or fashion design certificates, because, to a baby, no couch is good enough, no shoulder entirely finished, with out a wad of spit-up on it. This is not actually genuine spit, but regurgitated breastmilk, so this does not technically qualify, but it has sufficient traces of saliva for it to be included. In fact, if I could somehow extract the spit-up from my furniture, clothing and shoes, I could probably desiccate it and sell it to upmarket boutiques as an anti-aging powder.

You made it. Congratulations. I have no idea, either, but trust me, I prefer the term ‘Drama King’, as this seems to aid in the pointless wringing out of words. Don’t look for a deeper meaning. There isn’t one.