I have a confession to make: I think breath is nasty. Obviously the act of breathing is very important, but breath itself is pretty gross. I do not want my husband, kids, or dogs to breathe on me. Not anywhere on my skin, but most especially not in my face. I don’t care if they just brushed their teeth or popped a mint or chewed some gum. I do not want their nasty, moist mouth air anywhere near me. I am never going to be the mom who checks her kids’ breath to see if they really brushed their teeth.
That carries over to my reading, too. I do not want to read about characters and their nasty breathing. Of course I want my characters breathing (you know, unless they’re vampires or undead or something where breathing isn’t a requirement), but I do not want their breathing to become part of the story.
“Her breath fanned against my cheek.”
“His breaths soughed against my lips.”
And the worst one of all,
“Our breaths mingled.”
No. Just no. I don’t want that. Ever. But most especially in the morning. Morning breath is…. No. I just can’t.
Just me? Is there something you can’t read about?
You want difficult? I think TONGUE KISSING is gross. It’s also even more ubiquitous than breath. I’ve had to get used to it.
At least most of the time it’s written simply as “kissing”, so you can pretend no tongues are involved.
YES! I feel very vindicated to hear that someone else hates people breathing on them. My husband thinks it’s just me, ha. I guess it’s never really bothered me that much in books, though now that you’ve said it I bet I will not be able to read about “mingled breaths” without cringing. 🙂
I think the morning breath is so disgusting. They act like they woke up with a toothbrush in their mouths. I imagine what my son’s breath smells like in the morning and have a little baby barf. ::shudder::
I’ve never really thought about characters breathing or breaths mingling but thanks to this post, now I am. Yuck. It’s really bad right now since I have a cold and am having trouble breathing through my nose and eww, just eww.