A childhood belief about general

As a child, I knew that spitting was rude, and that spit itself was considered disgusting. It concerned me greatly that I seemed to be swallowing spit all the time - surely this made me very dirty and bad, but what else was I supposed to do? Surely spitting it out would be worse? I was very worried that I produced so much spit as to need to swallow it all the time, so I asked my friends "do you do this too?" - I got no very definite answers, they all hedged or denied it outright, because they all knew, just as I did, that spitting was rude, and that spittal itself was disgusting. For years I thought I must be seriously malformed, and quite disgusting, it was a long time before I figured out that everyone is continually renewing their saliva in order to keep their mouth dry, and hence has to swallow it.