today it’s about bodily fluids again. However, not those that have to do with sexual arousal, but rather with the opposite of it. Because again and again we have to watch you shaking your heads and slightly disgusted, as you let your liquids wantonly run free. Mainly: your spit.
That was already in school times so. When you sat bored on curbs, bent over and let your spit run in long threads towards the ground – only to pull it up again at the last moment. Not even that sexy! But even today we get to see your bodily fluids more often than we would like to.
If we go jogging with you for example. There you spit out again and again fountain-like the accumulated saliva, while we simply swallow ours down. Sometimes, when it’s particularly cold, you even stop at the side of the road to de-rot your nose: You press your index finger on one of the nostrils and shoot the snot towards the ground with a heavy breath.
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Sometimes only pictures are also good.
That you can spit (and snot) so violently is on the one hand totally impressive. Because no matter how often I have tried to imitate my big brother this feat – with me it all does not come out as bundled as with him. I’ll spare you more pictures – but only if you explain to us why you can’t at least stop spitting in public.
Is spitting a liquefied cry for attention??
Your spit and vomit is honestly rather unsightly and disgusting. We can still see that you don’t give a damn about sports. But you also often stand next to us at the bus stop in the city and just spit casually into the corner. We do not understand.
What’s that supposed to mean? Do you want to tell us something? Is the spitting out meant as an insult? Or a liquefied cry for attention? Do you think that spitting makes you manly?? If so, why? Have you watched too much "Titanic" and Leonardo DiCaprio teaching Kate Winslet to "spit like a man"?? Or maybe you just don’t know what to do with all that liquid? Do some soul-searching. But please: Bring out this time rather the mental outpourings.
The boys’ answer:
I know the number with the spit up thread rather from kindergarten times, but well, there may be regional differences. Nevertheless, I also confess myself guilty of spitting, at least in a sporting context, and I can at least show understanding for the snottiness.
I could now theorize about stone age people, who perhaps used to ritually extinguish the fire or something like that. Thank goodness there are children’s TV shows that deal with questions similar to ours, even if they are quite rare. A contribution of the sometimes quite great program "Wissen macht Ah" provides scientific explanations for both spitting and snotting. That’s why I know about it too.
Let’s start with the spit: When you exercise, you sweat, lose fluid, and your spit becomes firmer, stickier, and more annoying as a result. So out with it. Sounds understandable, doesn’t it? However, the article fails to answer the question of why it’s only us guys who do this, pointing to, you guessed it: masculinity binges. Whereby we have to disagree to a certain extent. If you jog through a deserted forest early in the morning, you shouldn’t feel any need to prove your masculinity to the trees. We have just explained the purely functional aspect of spitting around. If a teen gang for the purpose of testosterone reduction a bus stop full of drool, that is of course something else. But in this natural sport situation we would even go so far as to say: just try it, it’s really liberating!
Nobody really masters the snotting with the described air blast technique perfectly anymore
Let’s move on to the snot. Here, too, children’s television has a good excuse, at least for chilly days: The nasal conchae swell up during heavy breathing in a cold environment (i.e., during winter jogging, for example) in order to be able to warm the air sufficiently so that it doesn’t arrive too cold in the lungs. At the same time, mucus production picks up speed, which serves to humidify the air and remove dirt – outwardly. So if we’re snotting somewhere, it’s probably because there’s no other way and there’s not a handkerchief to be found. This is more of an emergency situation, no one really knows how to snot perfectly with the air blast technique you described. The knowledge of this has been lost since the early days of punk rock, when snotting at each other was considered good manners.
That’s why we prefer to "snot" unobserved, we know that this is not exactly appetizing. But maybe our inhibition threshold for the public removal of disturbing body fluids is simply lower than yours. Because we have been (and are) taught by other guys and men that if there is too much spit, you can spit.
And the answer to the question what you should do if you witness a snotting or spitting incident is really quite simple: Please, nothing at all.