We’ve all had it happen before. Someone is about to pass you going the opposite direction on the sidewalk. You’re close enough to see his or her face. Ten more steps and you’ll be side by side. Seven more steps. Six more. Five. They pull their head back, audibly suck up a big juicy wad of saliva, and spit right in your path.

Thirty seconds ago you were walking down the sidewalk, thinking about your next environmental science exam or your partner for religion class who makes you do all the work. Maybe you were even taking the time to notice the way the autumn sun was illuminating the Campanile from behind.

The point is that, now, you aren’t doing any of those things. Now you’re trying to avoid a frothy mess on the sidewalk.

At least you avoided it, though. If you realize freshly laid spit too late, you get a most wonderful sensation. You feel your shoe slide under you a little as you step in someone else’s mouth secretions. Yummy.

Of course, to make the slide very noticeable, the spit has to be particularly full of mucus. But mucus season appears to have arrived early this year, with everyone sneezing and hacking their way around campus. So watch out for those phlegm-filled jewels of joy. Maybe, like the turtles in Mario, you can jump on them for extra points.

So goober spits are gross – we should all know that. And they take a lot of preparation. The spitter has to suck snot from their nasal passage into their mouth, which is accompanied by a lovely sound and facial expression.

However, the ones I really like are the people who try to spit, but can’t. The saliva just dangles, glistening, from their lower lip until they have to either spit again or wipe their mouth. Sometimes, the strand of spit comes back and hits them squarely in the chest. Any attempt to look cool goes straight out the window.

Now, look, the thing to do is to swallow your saliva like everyone else. I swallow my spit. Your communications professor swallows his or her spit. Heck, even Bill Nye the Science Guy probably swallows his spit.

I don’t want to think what the sidewalk would look like if everyone deposited their spit on it.

Maybe you’ve never noticed all this spitting on campus. Well, unless you like stepping in others’ slime, you may want to pay a little closer attention.

Maybe you’re saying, “Miss Lewis, it is cool to share your spit with the rest of campus. Sharing is caring.”

If you’d care enough not to share your germs with me and everyone else, that’d be great. There are some nasty illnesses that go around this campus, and even if you’re not sick, you could be carrying them. A while ago, I had that respiratory cold that’s going around, and I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. I’m not saying I contracted it from someone’s sidewalk spit, but it’s not impossible.

Listen to the experts. “The mouth is a perfect environment for growing bacteria, viruses and fungi. It’s warm and dark, food goes in there several times a day,” says Donna Mager, a dentist and microbiologist at the Forsyth Institute, which specializes in the area of oral health.

Mmm, mouth fungi. Think about that next time you kiss someone. Or the next time you step through someone else’s spit.

If you, for some crazy reason, just have to spit, please don’t do so directly in someone else’s path. And I guess it’s preferable to get it in the grass instead of on the sidewalk. I know it doesn’t look as cool to spit in a trash can, but that’s another option. For the most part, please keep it in your mouth. The alternative is just nasty.

– Bailey Lewis is a sophomore in English from Indianola.