wherein she explains that alarming cheek licking thing

yesterday, in a fit of pique over a few things going wrong--standing at the baggage carrousel 'til the last bag came and the huge group of australian pharmacists (two of which sat next to me on the plane and were just lovely) had all wandered off into the copenhagen night and still not having my bag, followed immediately by some totally badly-raised arrogant asshole queue-jumping dane cutting ahead in the line at the DSB counter (and yes maybe i HAVE given up commas as well as capital letters)--i may have mentioned in the middle of a comment that was just a titch rant-y on one of my favorite new blogs a desire to lick the cheeks of certain parties. which may or may not have caused a bit of alarm on the part of those parties and an admonition to:

1. stop swearing on their blog. 
2. let them use any damn word they wanted (including rad, despite its obvious fall from use sometime around 1988, tho' usage possibly hung on in places like fargo into 1989) or they would take away my crown(!?!) WTF!?!
3. keep my tongue within range of licking only the inside of my own cheeks.

this made me realize that i should probably explain the cheek licking thing.

but first, a small diversion (like you didn't see that coming). one of the beauties of new friends (in the blogosphere or in real life) is that you can revive all of your old habits/jokes and they seem new again. so you can once again say, "lemme think about it, no." (with no pause between "it" and "no") to people and they find it hilarious once again (b/c let's face it, your old friends know ALL about it and think it's a bit lame of you to keep saying it).

it's the same with the licking thing.

the licking thing began at a party many years ago (let's just say early 90s and leave it at that). it was someone's older sister's party and so we didn't really know most of the people there all that well. but we (being my friend K (it was her sister's party) and me) wanted to have a bit of fun and be remembered, so we cooked up a scheme wherein we would go up to someone we didn't know very well (say a kind of cute boy) and stand beside him, one on each side. we would then, with a glance, both go in for the lick. on his cheeks.

it's rather surprising to suddenly have two girls you don't know very well simultaneously lick your cheeks, but once people got over the shock and wiped off the spit, they had to admit they actually rather liked it.

of course, eventually, you get known for this and then one day, to your dismay, the person you're about to lick dodges the lick at the exact moment when it's too late to pull back and you accidentally lick your friend, who in turn licks you simultaneously--on the tongue, leaving you a bit scarred and unable to play the licking game anymore for a number of years. tho' the cute boy who just dodged the lick is pretty into the whole idea and would like the two of you to demonstrate again. which you do not oblige, seeing as you are sputtering and spitting and generally washing your tongue off with beer.

however, you do, on your own, occasionally use a quick lick of the cheek to disarm people during a boring moment at a party or when husband is being all serious and needs to lighten up a bit. it's a totally affectionate gesture, you see. tho' husband has developed a 6th sense about it (or maybe knows when you get the look on your face that means you're about to go in for the lick) and is pretty good at dodging it. it matters less that the lick is dodged when you are going in for it alone.

and that's the story of the alarming cheek licking thing.