Day 1081 - Spit Takes

Andrew caught a cold in the middle of the week and getting sick never really bothers him. He'll tell us that his mouth hurts or that he needs tissue. But overall, he's still pretty pleasant and goes about his business. A few days later, Emma caught the cold, and her reaction to illness is completely the opposite. She cries and whines and makes the entire day a gigantic chore (i.e. she takes after me.).

As is usually the case with the common cold, you get hit with a sore throat. Emma cried about her "ouchy" throat the entire day. She would point to her mouth and throat and explain how "ouchy" it was. Her throat bothered her so much that she came up with a simple solution to soothe her throat: she stopped swallowing her saliva.

That's right. She would just keep quiet, and I would slowly see her cheeks get bigger and bigger. It was like that dam at the end of the first Superman movie. You start to see cracks and leaks around the edges, and you damn well know what's going to happen next.

"Emma," I reprimanded. "Are you swallowing your saliva?"

Emma would just look at me blankly.

"Emma, answer me."

Emma continued to stare at me.

"Emma. Yes or no?"

"No," answered Emma as the flood gates opened and saliva spilled out all over her face.

Lisa's solution to this anti-swallowing demonstration was to give Emma a little plastic bowl for her to spit. I felt like we were living in a saloon with all of the spitting going on.

Eventually I had enough of the spitting. I told Emma she had to stop spitting out and start to swallow again. For once, all my years working as a 1st AD in the porno industry finally came handy.

I carried Emma upstairs and sat her on my lap. She cried and cried and refused to swallow her spit. I told her we were not going to go anywhere until she stopped spitting into a bowl.

At first, I was determined to stand my ground. But I became uneasy as I started to see Emma's cheeks start to fill up. I quickly changed my tune and tried to coax Emma into swallowing her spit by being gentle and loving. Guess what? It didn't work. She spit all of her saliva on to my shirt.

I did not get mad; mostly because I was disgusted. Emma continued to cry, but I explained to her that I understood her throat hurt yet that was no reason to spit into a bowl. After she stopped crying, I asked if she was okay. She said "Yes" as another cup full of spit spilled on my pants.

You can see where this is going. I was probably spit on two or three more times before Emma finally started to swallow her saliva again. Thank God, Emma stopped this disgusting habit, and thank God, I was actually used to getting spit on from numerous blind dates in college.

Although some people might think I was being a little too strict with Emma, I did wait until the end of the day to get her to stop spitting into a bowl. I was just concerned that when she got into bed, she would have a difficult time falling asleep. All I can say is that if the next health problem Emma has is hemorrhoids, I'm going to let Lisa handle it.