By canchin (bbs.chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-07-04 16:36

After using a Kleenex, what do you do with it? The preferred answer would be to toss it into a garbage bin, but this just adds to the growing waste problem as well as the destruction of the environment! At least spit is biodegradable!

At the same time, spitting in the wrong place is sick. In this instance, the "wrong place" means on the sidewalk, in a restaurant, on the stairs of a building, but spitting is healthy; for the spitter. Better out than in and if the body has generated mucous that the body wants out it is vital to get it out. Keeping it in, swallowing it (that to me is the most disgusting) is just sick - and makes one sick. Bacteria just love mucous and need it to thrive. They need a warm, moist place to thrive and propagate.

So go ahead and spit say I - just do it into a garbage container, or into the sewer, or the side of the road, or into one of the many ashtrays on the street but don't do it right in front of where one is walking or on the floor of a restaurant or on the stairs of a building.

When I see someone spitting in front of me, I will hold my breath until I either get by them or until the air conditioning unit has a chance to at least move the air around if I'm in a building. I also always carry a cloth handkerchief with me so that I can whip it out and cover my nose and mouth to at least give me what is ultimately a false sense of security since the molecules of any virus can easily pass through the fibers of my hanky.

It's like the carcinogenic fumes - 200 to 300 of them - that spew from vehicles that burn fossil fuel. They linger constantly in every city in the world in a cloud that extends from ground level to about 1 meter above the ground. Sort of why I laugh so hard at those dim-witted - and I only use "women" here because they are the ones who do it most often - women with babies in carriages that like to wave their little hands in front of their noses if they see someone smoking, all the while their squalling brat is in a baby carriage, nose and body firmly ensconced in the cloud of carcinogenic fumes from burned fossil fuels.

The dim-witted think their little display of umbrage at a cigarette smoker has meaning while at the same time they're killing their kid by ensuring that the baby's lungs are being filled with cancer-causing elements long before the baby's lungs are even fully formed or their immune system is strong enough to deal with the toxins.