Salvation by saliva

YOU DIDN’T have much time … once you bumped heads with someone you had just a few seconds to spit on the ground, otherwise you knew what would happen.

Don’t ask me why youngsters bumped heads so often, but suffice to say that it happened often enough for us to have a contingency plan in place for when it did happen.

We all knew that if you didn’t “spit out” you’d grow two heads … of course no one had ever seen anyone with two heads as a result of a head-butt, but all that proves is that “spitting out” actually worked. I used to believe that spitting out too late was the reason that you’d get a “doembie” on your “dombie” (a knob on the head) … refrain from spitting and that doembie would develop into a dombie!

It’s weird that the same remedy for bumped heads had to be used when you saw a lizard’s tail that had been discarded by the fleeing reptile.

“Spit out, or your mother is going to die!” we were warned. I used to drink a lot of water back then just to keep my salivary glands topped up … you’d never know when you needed to save a life, or prevent a head from growing.

These days when I bump my head I do not spit anymore – it’s not socially acceptable you see. I simply stick out my tongue so that the saliva can evaporate, and I’ve experienced amazing results.

Now, for those readers who think that I was just a tad superstitious and I shouldn’t have believed everything I was told, allow me to remind you that back in those days our “Google” was printed on chewing gum wrappers, and that when we didn’t have gum we had to trust word of mouth or take a slog to the library to pore over thick volumes and verify facts.

These days with information at our very fingertips, an abundance of search engines, online encyclopaedias and hoax slayers and mythbusters by the bushel there’s no need for us to be duped any more.

Yet the opposite seems to be true – these days we are more gullible than ever.

I recently read that police were looking into the possible murder of Chester Bennington, the lead singer of alternative rock band

Linkin Park, because his apparent suicide bore too much of a resemblance to that of Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell. The article posted on yournewswire.com claimed that Bennington’s death was being investigated by police as a possible murder; at last count it had been shared nearly 800 000 times. OK, it’s probably fun to fool people, but I thought of Cornell’s and Bennington’s family and friends – how did this sick lie affect them?

The other danger with fake news is that it has the potential to shape society.

A fabricated lie can do immense harm, causing rifts, suspicion and conflict.

Consider the recent Bell Pottinger fallout and the divisions it has caused in South Africa.

What worries me most is the fact that when you alert someone to the fact that they’re spreading hoaxes and fake news on social media, often their response is: “I thought it couldn’t be true, but I thought I’d share it just in case it was … just to be safe.”

If that’s your perspective, then you’d better sleep with your mouth closed, just in case you swallow a spider … which is one of the most widely circulated myths found on the internet from a book on insect folklore printed in 1954, and circulated by columnist Lisa Holst in 1993, to prove how gullible people can be.

Yes, you can stop trying to spit out spider bits in the morning.