There is a man who spits in my neighbourhood. You would have implied this from the title, but perhaps not the location. Nevertheless, he walks and he spits.

I had never noticed this Man Who Spits until he was pointed out to me. “Like clockwork,” I was told, “He comes by at 8:00 AM every day.”

“I can hear ’em, but I can’t see ’em!” I replied in a heightened, almost-anxious voice. My curiosity was piqued by this auditory mystery of a man as I scanned the scene with the less-dramatic energy of a WWII observation tower guard trying to spot an incoming air raid.

“Look for his large black dog on a lead.” Ahh. Using this new information, my eyes filtered out the backpack-laden children trudging up the sidewalks and honed in on The Man Who Spit like a perched eagle spotting a prized trout in the valley.

My house sits halfway up a fairly steep hill that descends (from this angle) down towards a T-intersection before curving back up then down again similar to the first and second drops of your bog-standard rollercoaster. You’d know that The Man Who Spits is coming because as soon as he crests the far hill, this paved, parabolic landscape unintentionally creates the perfect acoustic mirror for his sniffs and snorts to bounce off the bottom and back up into your earholes.

I watched intently.

HRRRRRRRK-PTUUH!

No less than three times did he suck it in and spat it out between my first sighting and where The Man Who Spits passed my driveway. He must have a lot going on up there, I thought; a phlegm-generating machine operating at full steam.

I’ve been there. My sinuses aren’t exactly my friend, and I haven’t been able to comfortably leave the house without an expertly folded tissue in my pocket for as long as I can remember; it is almost always needed at some point during my day. Is that what’s going on with him too? A mindset of “better out than in”, perhaps?

I wonder why and I may never know—approaching The Man Who Spits to ask him why he does it so consistently loud doesn’t seem like the most socially appropriate idea.

Maybe he has a morning cig with his coffee, and feels the irresistible need to flush a plug of mucus out? Maybe he’s got a nasal drainage issue that tortuously tickles his throat until he relieves himself of that sensation? Maybe he’s allergic to his large black dog or the dust that lives within its shaggy hair, but loves it regardless and their sunrise stroll together tends to loosen an over-night build up of junk in his nose?

These questions will remain and rise again every morning as I sip my own coffee to the sounds of this human rooster signalling to the neighbourhood that it’s time to get up.

And, as it turns out, you can count on The Man Who Spits to be walking his dog at 8:00 PM at night too. Right on time, both ways.