Mom Spit: The Universal Solvent

Confess! Who among us will deny having spit onto a tissue to wipe our child's face? Like it's a more sanitary alternative to a milk mustache or something.

Oh we swore up and down that we'd never do it to OUR children. Just like we swore we wouldn't use the TV for babysitting, or let them eat french fries. (Next thing you know we'll be tweaking cheeks - the first checkbox on the euthanasia form.)

Then one day we catch ourselves in the act; our muscles playing out a primal memory of spit-and-wipe - morphic resonance of so many generations of smear-averse mothers.

The simple fact is: Mom Spit can dissolve any spot, at any time, and anywhere. Or if it can't, we pretend it did the trick, and all remaining filth is ignored behind the Mom Spit cloak of invisibility.

It's a well known fact that Mom Spit works best on faces, patent leather shoes, and fancy collars. While in general, human saliva contains appalling quantities of nasty bacteria - which routinely eat through teeth, and sometimes metal fillings - the mature female variety of spit, when used by a mother to clean the aforementioned items, qualifies as "sterile." Perhaps due to its maternal nature, it will only use its powers against the forces of dirt.

Somebody ought to find a way to harness this power! It's a capitalist society, after all. Plenty of those large corrupt chemical companies spend jillions of dollars trying to find new stuff to dissolve old stuff, or stuff to stick or unstick magazine flaps and various pastel pieces of paper. Mom Spit could be a goldmine, to anybody with the right jingle!

If Mom Spit will clean a shoe, it ought to work like a charm on linoleum, wood, cloth, metal and space-age polymers! Dissolves Grease and Grime in zero time! Throw out all those spray bottles! Mom Spit! It's the universal solvent. (Just add hankie.)

Mom Spit could probably get bug guts off a windshield better than any of that high-priced stuff they sell at the store. It would go way faster if one could just lick the window (rather than relying on the hankie middleman) but I guess that's out of the question. Only a little kid would do something that gross. But getting the resulting bug parts off their cheek afterward would definitely call for Mom Spit.

The Mom Spit effect seems to work across species. Mother cats are always licking their young. Dogs and horses, too. Even aliens! You've seen the movies. They all have really ticked-off female aliens running around, spit dripping everyplace, burning its way through bulkheads and metal floors and whatnot. In fact, it burns through everything except the facial skin of its offspring, and possibly white taffeta. Clearly the afflicted astronauts haven't discovered the taffeta secret - usually because they're too busy screaming expletives and blasting laser guns everywhere. Their mothers probably wouldn't be too proud of that behavior. Plus, their faces are always dirty!

Kids have no appreciation for the remarkable Mom Spit effect, and are always pulling their heads away, in fear-avoidance of the proffered tissue - even as (inexplicably) they will eat mulch, dirt, and small rocks with enthusiasm.

Yet kids will attempt to mimic the Mom Spit effect in inappropriate situations, when they simply do not have the proper training. Kid Spit just doesn't have the same power as Mom Spit (spit calls for aging, like fine wine.) Kid Spit only smears things around. And it definitely doesn't have anything akin to the properties of glue, even after eating waffles. Thus, when kids lick a shred of paper and attempt to reattach it to the matching piece - no matter how many TIMES they lick it, it's not going to work. Kid Spit has no known commercial use, except to lubricate watermelon seed projectiles.

Dad Spit should never make an appearance, under any circumstances. Dad Spit is just disgusting. Even if said Dad is a single parent - he should just dip his napkin in his glass of water and be done with it. The appearance of spit coming from a male only serves to demonstrate his inadequate upbringing. Whereas the Queen of England can spit and wipe without being judged, no man is afforded this leeway. (But hey - men can pee standing up.)

Grandmother Spit is "Mom Spit once removed." Still good.

Really the only thing Mom Spit can't do is keep her mouth moist during school plays. Unless she's backstage and her little actor has a smear…