I had my 4 month-old baby in a nail salon and was in the middle of having a long-awaited foot spa when a salon attendant put a little spit on her finger and swiped it on my baby's leg "para hindi mausog". Wha?! Did you just spit on my baby lady?!!!! Totally taken by surprise and paralyzed by both disgust and utter disbelief, I was left with my mouth open and a baby with a stranger's saliva on her. Stunned I couldn't even come up with anything to say, much less do.
What do you say in such a situation? Ah, thanks for making sure my baby doesn't get usog. Or, would you like a taste of your own medicine and I swipe some of my own saliva on you just so you'll know how disgusting and just plain WRONG it is? Or do I just nod politely and acknowledge her good intentions? I, of course, being stunned, innately polite and caught up in a shockingly unfamiliar situation, did the latter.
Ugh. I felt like kicking myself a few minutes later when I was finally out of the salon and guiltily wiping my baby's leg with a baby wipe and some sanitizer. What would possess a completely sane individual to intentionally spit on an infant?
Did a little research and found this on Wikipedia.
"Usog" or balis is a topic in psycho-medicine (attributed to Filipino superstition in Western Psychology) where an affliction or psychological disorder is attributed to a greeting by a stranger, or an evil eye hex. It usually affects an unsuspecting child, usually an infant or toddler, who has been greeted by a visitor or a stranger.
Please. If there's anything I fear more, coming from any stranger, it's a mouthful of bacteria and a bad case of misdirected good intentions.
At least now I know when a stranger coos and and gets all friendly with the baby, I make sure to move the stroller to arm-swatting distance and to keep an ear out for the dreaded usog word coming out of said stranger's mouth. With appearance of spit, I now know to take off running. Never again.
*The sign in the picture above is from www.mytinyhands.com, created by a mom who has had one too many unwashed strangers touch her little cutie. Now if she only made a sign that said, "Please Do Not Spit on Baby."
If you like this blog, please leave me a comment so I'll know which ones to do more of. Thanks!
Hey K, this post got me laughing! I try to keep fingers with spit away from the baby, too! Just yesterday, while at a party with the kids, some of the parents were discussing if "usog" was something one should believe in, etc. One even said that you can actually have them wipe the spit on your baby's clothing instead of the skin! Yikes.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you should blog more. I love the profile pic, by the way. Hehehe. ;)
yikes talaga! why would i want to put a stranger's spit ANYWHERE near my baby? and am glad you like the pic, notice the card? ;-)
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