The Magnificient Spit

Today I was behind a car waiting at a stoplight, and I noticed it was a single guy in the driver’s seat with his arm on the back of the passenger seat. Why I observed this I don’t know, but just at that second I saw two white masses, side by side, come sailing out of the passenger window, fly over the grassy strip on the side of the road, and hit a bush a good fifteen feet away.

It could only have been spit or lugies propelled by a slingshot mouth that could launch a sputnik. I was utterly amazed. You just don’t see freaks of nature like this every day. In fact, I’ve never seen a lugie hurled that far.

That’s probably why he had his arm on the passenger seat – to hold him steady.
My daughter won a watermelon spitting contest in kindergarten. I was quite the proud little momma. She beat everyone by several feet. That child’s mouth was lethal – even to this day you should never EVER get near her teeth if she’s mad at you. You risk coming away with a missing hunk of forearm. But even she could not have launched spit that far.

What was so amazing is that he was so accurate. He had the opening of a window to get through, and you might not think that’s difficult but it is. Not that I’ve ever spit out the passenger side – I’m not brave enough for that and besides I don’t spit. Never have except if a bug flies in my mouth or something. But on occasion I will eat an apple and find myself holding a sticky core and nowhere to put it. I start thinking about the little birdies or rodents that would be delighted to munch on that core, and why should I deprive them?

But you can’t throw it out the driver’s door, not in the US anyway – maybe in England. You’d end up with the core in the road, and then some little furry thing would get squashed flatter than a tortilla. So I have to throw them out the passenger door. And I have to thrust really really hard or else it will land in the road and then – out of guilt – I’d have to turn around and go back to move the apple lest I worry all day about some little sweet gift of nature getting it’s eyeballs popped out when it was it by a diesel truck as it tried to pull the apple out of the road.

So I cock my elbow and bring the hand holding the apple all the way in front of my face to get more leverage, and then I fling the arm toward the passenger window as hard as I can.

Nine times out of ten it hits the inside door and leaves a wet, mushy spot before landing on the passenger seat and rolling onto the floor, going front to back on the hairy carpet like some golf course lawn mower, leaving a trail of apple juice over every fuzzy inch.

This is why I was so amazed that the guy got those lugies out the window today. And that they flew so far. It really was truly amazing. Wish you could have seen it.