Quote of the Week:

"He is no fool, who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." (Jim Elliot)



Drop me a line if you want to be notified of new posts to SiTG:


My site was nominated for Best Parenting Blog!
My site was nominated for Hottest Daddy Blogger!




www.flickr.com
This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from Woodlief. Make your own badge here.

The Best of Sand:

The Blog
About
Greatest Hits
Comedy
DVD Reviews
Faith and Life
Irritations
Judo Chops
The Literate Life
News by Osmosis
The Problem with Libertarians
Snapshots of Life
The Sermons


Creative Commons License
All work on this site and its subdirectories is licensed under a Creative Commons License.



Search the Site:




Me Out There:

Non-Fiction
Free Christmas
Don't Suffer the Little Children
Boys to Men
A Father's Dream
WORLD webzine posts

Not Non-Fiction
The Grace I Know
Coming Apart
My Christmas Story
Theopneustos



The Craft:

CCM Magazine
Charis Connection
Faith in Fiction
Grassroots Music



Favorite Journals:

Atlantic Monthly
Doorknobs & Bodypaint
Image Journal
Infuze Magazine
Orchid
Missouri Review
New Pantagruel
Relief
Ruminate
Southern Review



Blogs I Dig:




Education & Edification:

Arts & Letters Daily
Bill of Rights Institute
Junk Science
U.S. Constitution



It's good to be open-minded. It's better to be right:

Stand Athwart History
WSJ Opinion



Give:

Home School Legal Defense
Institute for Justice
Local Pregnancy Crisis
Mission Aviation
Prison Ministries
Russian Seminary
Unmet Needs



Chuckles:

Cox & Forkum
Day by Day
Dilbert







Donors Hall of Fame

Alice
Susanna Cornett
Joe Drbohlav
Anthony Farella
Amanda Frazier
Michael Heaney
Don Howard
Mama
Laurence Simon
The Timekeeper
Rob Long
Paul Seyferth



My Amazon.com Wish List

Add to Technorati Favorites






December 12, 2002
On Cold and Flu Season

Yesterday a large man rushed onto my train just as we were leaving, and found his way to a seat on the other side of my table. It was apparent that he ran to catch the train, and it was apparent that he did not often run. He sat slouched in his seat, eyes closed, breathing heavily.

Breathing his foul, onion-laden, germ-ridden breath all over me. To make things worse, he had some sort of crust-type item clinging to the inside of his nose. To make things much worse, he began alternately breathing through his mouth and through his nostrils -- big, heavy puffs of air. I was worried he was having a heart attack. I was more worried that one of his nose exhalations was going to send that aerodynamic-looking crust onto my laptop, or worse, my person. I'm sure I looked, as I physically recoiled in the face of this potential offense, much like the debutante who discovers a turd in her punch bowl.

As for the breath, it bears repeating: sharp, stinging halitosis. This only accentuated what I normally try to forget: that every day, strangers with poor hygiene are getting their germs all over my personal space.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I need the personal perimeter of a psychopath. I don't want people touching, nearing, or looking at me without a personal invitation. But I think I have a fairly healthy attitude about germs. They are an inevitable feature of our planet, and people spread them inadvertently. Hey, I wrestled in high school, which, if you haven't heard, basically involves rolling around on a mat with another barely clothed guy, in the height of cold and flu season. (You homo- and hetero-phobes can make your wisecracks in the Comments section below.)

So I know from germs. If the situation calls for it, I'll expose myself to them. Had the guy across from me gone into full cardiac arrest, I would have been the first to provide CPR, including mouth-to-mouth (though, I confess, only after spritzing a few healthy doses of breath spray into his gaping maw).

What I don't appreciate, however, are the unintentional exposures caused by sloppy, unthinking people who haven't heard of germ theory. If you are wondering what I mean by this, you are probably one of these people. You invariably get sick four or five times per winter (mistakenly calling these "the flu"), and give yourself food poisoning two or three times a year as well (you mistakenly call this "stomach flu"). Your grubby hands are frequently on or near your face, and you rarely wash them before meals. You have the ridiculous belief that coughing or sneezing directly into your open palm is a means of disease prevention, despite the fact that you use your still-moist hand to hold onto the rail on the Metro, open an office door, or give money to the store clerk.

You make me sick, literally. You also make a lot of other people sick. So on behalf of all of us conscientious people who take care to maintain good hygiene, but who get sick as a result of your appalling negligence, let me just give you a big sneeze of thanks. I hope you die of typhoid.

Not really, but I hope you get a really bad rash exactly where I did after hiking Pike's Peak. But that's a story for another time.

Right now, I want to share with my fellow germ aficionados some of the methods I use to avoid contact with the personal filth of the unkempt horde. I won't spend much time on the obvious: keep your hands off your face unless they are recently washed, wash them after handling money, the mail, your private parts, the private parts of others, and pretty much anything else lots of people have been groping (doorknobs, keyboards, handrails, etc.). Sneeze into the crook of your elbow, not your hand. Cook your food thoroughly, and don't let it sit out for hours on end. And so on.

What I will focus on here is one critical piece of the clean-living chain, which I call Bathroom Survival. This is to be distinguished from my advice on Prison Survival, to be written at a later date. What I mean in the current context is surviving the public restroom, which is the Union Station of germs.

First, know your restroom. There are some key things you should note as you enter. Which way does the door open? Do you need to turn a handle to get out? Are there paper towels, or worse blow "dryers", or worse still, those dingy cloth towel things that hang down like so much rancid meat in a freezer? Is there soap? For the love of God, is there soap?

Let's go with the worst-case scenario. You are in a public restroom, and the door opens inward. (For those of you who don't get it, this means you will have to handle the same doorknob gripped by the utility guy who doesn't wash his hands after crapping.) There are only blow dryers. The toilets have flush handles. (Note: not flushing is not an option. We are the last bastions of civilization -- let's not behave like cretins.) You need to use the stall, which has a handle practically crawling with disease.

Assume, however, that there is soap. If there is not, go outside and do your business in the lobby, or on the counter, or on the manager, if you can find him. Very few juries will convict you.

So what do you do? Lesser people would turn themselves over to the germ gods, and end up with stomach cramps and uncontrollable flatulence tinged with diarrhea. Take charge of your fate.

First, understand that what matters most is keeping your hands off your face until they have been washed. With that said, there is no need to expose yourself to every germ. Flush the toilet with your foot. Wash your hands well.

You have two options to make a clean exit. The first requires a little timing -- stand with your hands under the dryer until someone else gets to the door, and then follow him out, catching the door with your elbow. You are out clean, and he's the one who suffers unbearable gassiness during his evening TV time.

The second option requires planning, and gets back to my original point -- know your terrain. You can see before you enter the bathroom whether it requires touching a handle to get out. If it does, then grab something -- a handful of napkins, office stationary, a big leaf off the ficus -- to serve as your shield. Keep it in your pocket until your hands are clean, and then step out safely.

Some people would call this behavior obsessive-compulsive. I don't deny that I need therapy, for a lot of things. But what good is mental health if you are sneezing, wheezing, and oozing from multiple orifices? Trust me, combating the germ, and its witless carrier, requires extreme vigilance. Only the paranoid survive, especially in a metropolis.

So for the love of all that is holy and clean, let's be careful out there.

Posted by Woodlief on December 12, 2002 at 08:23 AM


Comments

On the other hand, there's a train of thought which begins with, "that which does not kill me...". When applied to bacteria/virus scenarios, it means that you need not fear a little discomfort, because the next time you catch it, you will have built up some immunity. So with your avoidance of infectious microbes, it may mean that when you finally encounter one you cannot avoid, you will be hit much harder than me.
On the gripping hand, I sneeze into my shoulder, not my hand, too. And I flush the toilet with my foot anytime I'm out. I can even lift a toilet seat with my foot.
No sense in being stupid...

Posted by: nathan at December 12, 2002 8:52 AM

Nathan,
Reasonable thinking, except that the mutation rate for these common viruses is so high that one can't really build up immunity to them.

Posted by: Tony at December 12, 2002 10:03 AM

OK - I've got the toilet-seat-lift and flush-with-the-foot thing down, been teaching it to my boys in public restrooms for years. I'm also good at not touching anything that doesn't have to be touched after washing the hands. But I have to admit, I'll need to train myself on the sneezing into the elbow thing.

Posted by: Kevin at December 12, 2002 10:58 AM

I have a dream.

I dream of a restroom in a place far, far away.

The restroom has no door, just an open portal that leads to a winding passageway into a restroom wonderland. The passageway is wide enough, unlike those in certain American airports, such that persons coming from the other direction need not collide with me should both of us be carrying luggage. It is a big, welcoming, winding hall.

The restroom inside is well-lit, and well-ventilated. And there is no one else in there, because, after all, as Sartre said, hell is other people. What Sartre really meant was: the 9th rung of hell is other people in the bathroom.

I dream I need to pee. I walk over to the urinal, across a tile floor faintly redolent of disinfectant that is of such strength as to kill anything lower than me on the evolutionary ladder. The wall over the urinal is clean, both of handwritten graffiti, and of the printed sort published by Gannett. I do what must be done.

And then, as I step away from the urinal, I notice a gentle whoosh from an electronic flushing mechanism. No need to have contact with any handles. Plus, there's enough delay that I can step back from the urinal and avoid any urinal flushing "overspray." As a I step further away, a small device mounted high on the wall effuses a gentle puff of pleasantly fragrant disinfectant spray, suggesting countless such moments in the past that eradicated the foul odors and putrid aerosolized patricles of previous users' fluids, gases, and solids.

But my dream continues.

I head to the sink. All surfaces are impeccably dry and more pristine than the fixtures in a Restoration Hardware catalogue. And here I give a silent thanks and I see: Gone are the days of New Jersey Turnpike restrooms where one must contort one's body to lift a foot up to sink level to press the continuous-pressure-only activated water faucet. No, not here. Here we have a kindly little electronic eye that silently detects my presence and causes a gentle stream of instantly warm water to pour forth. And the stream stays on as long as I am within three feet of the eye--not the two millimeter distance required of less sophisticated restrooms, which could put one perilously close to surfaces moist with fluids that have recently cleansed the hands of rogues.

You think my dream is over? No sir. Within easy reach is a soap dispenser. But, alas, I needn't touch any lever coated with a congealed soapy goo containing billions of super microbes that have developed resistance not just to the antibacterial soap in which they breed, but also to DDT and nuclear blasts. Not here. Here an exactly correct quantity of soap pours into my outstretched palm simply when another electronic eye notices my hand.

I scrub while studying the precise angle of my tie in the glass mirror before me that is free of spittle, free of particles flung by sloppy dental flossers, and free of any accumulated mist from human breath.

I rinse.

And guess how the towel dispenser works? Here too, another electronic eye detects my presence. I needn't get closer than a foot. And out comes a four-foot length of proper paper towels.

After drying, I drop my towels into a garbage receptacle. This is not one of those receptacles with a lid held in place by some lever under pressure so severe that a man must push with half his weight to pry open the lid, such that not even Superman could, with one hand, open the lid with the used towel, drop the towel, and remove the hand faster than the lid can close. Not here. This is a nice, open, welcoming hole--one that takes my refuse into a dark oubliette.

I leave, and on the way out, maybe I think hear a faint, pleasant, ghostly, feminine "good-bye."

I have a dream.

Andrew Cohen

Posted by: Andrew Cohen at December 12, 2002 11:21 AM

Dear Tony,
You are so right and I have to tell you how sorry I am for causing permanent damage to one so young. I know this has to be a direct result of coming through the door and chasing you down for sugar.I didn't have to give chase to the other boys. Not like I did you. I remember kissing you all over the back of the head,while you hid your face. I sugared you behind the ears, on the back of the neck,and not until I blew on your belly, could I get you to drop your hands and get up under your chin. I am truly sorry that you are unable to go to the bathroom without fear.

Consider this. Maybe, just maybe, you are taking one of those dradful colds and are feeling exceptionally grumpy. Either way it won't hurt you to have some hot lemon with honey. Put your feet up when you drink this and take a few deep breaths. This is very important, the feet thing.
I,m sending my love with lots of hugs and kisses to you and yours.
p.s. I see what you mean. I recieved my Catfish picture. LOVE IT!

Posted by: Aunt Debbie at December 12, 2002 12:18 PM

Actually, Andrew Cohen, the whole "electronic sensor thing is load of rubish - they are expensive and are (from my experience) too high maintenace (or impossible to set up right the first time, hard to say). Either way, significantly often, they fail to work properly.

Replace them with foot pedals - nice, cheap, simple, dependable fooot-pedals (or foot-buttons, whatever you want to call them). No need to worry about germs - after all, you're already walking on the floor, how much worse could it be?

And yes, opening the door going out of the bathroom barehanded is not an option... I've noticed far too many men who do not wash their hands after using the urinal (and a good many who do not flush - I consider them lower life forms).

Posted by: Deoxy at December 12, 2002 1:35 PM

Why yes Perrfesser, I can spell dreadful.

Posted by: debbie at December 12, 2002 1:52 PM

I am constantly wondering why are so many people so dirty?

Anyway let me add this, in a restaurant I never place my silverware on the table, I set it on my plate or inside the napkin. Who knows if the table is even remotely clean...

Posted by: Josh at December 12, 2002 3:19 PM

I take advantage of my height. Most restroom doors have those things on top that make it close slowly. They have hinged metal arms that jut out. When the door opens in, I begin opening it by pushing the hinged arm, and then grab the top of the door and pull. If it opens out, I push right up near the top.

Also, I've carried hand sanitizer with me ever since an unfortunate incident at work.

Posted by: Aaron Armitage at December 12, 2002 5:39 PM

I'm not totally convinced that mutation rates make the microbes completely new. After all, your higher susceptibility to food poisoning when you go abroad is not because food preparation is that much dirtier, but because you are not accustomed to the microbes (I've tested this out on three trips to China, including my current one). Locals don't get sick cuz they are inured...but they get sick when they come to the US just as easily as we get sick when we come here.
I also did see my first electric eye automatic soap foam dispenser on this trip.

Posted by: nathan at December 12, 2002 10:08 PM

Everyone knows it's impossible to get sick when wrestling because you are usually getting the living bejeezus choked out of you. Or vice versa.

Posted by: hbchrist at December 13, 2002 12:40 AM

Beautiful rant, Tony!

Posted by: Da Goddess at December 13, 2002 2:21 AM

Okay, how many people believe my good friend Andrew Cohen should get his own website? Write and tell him so. The man is a comical genius.

On the other hand, my site is better for him posting here. Hey Andrew, do you have an agent?

Posted by: Tony at December 13, 2002 7:57 AM

Don't sneeze on your hand or your arm or anything else. It makes the sneeze spray everywhere. Sneeze on the floor. Really. Sneeze towards the floor. One too many health videos when I worked at the ND cafeteria freshman year have the sneeze spray germ spread permanently etched in my brain and it's a frightening, frightening thing. Please, please, sneeze on the ground.

(Trying not to think about the sneeze in the crook of your elbow and then offer me your arm guy / girl scenario. Entirely too disgusting.)

Posted by: Cis at December 13, 2002 8:38 AM

Andrew MUST get a website. RIGHT THIS INSTANT. Oh, and, uh, Tony.....I hate to bring this up, but.....what about.........airborne????? Oh, no, I should not have brought that up. Next time I see you, you will be in a "bubble".

Posted by: Llana at December 15, 2002 8:51 PM

Great stuff A & T...and there is a product for us guys and gals afflicted with this understandable degree of paranoia re: germs--tiny bottles of waterless hand disinfectant; try the samples section of the local drug store or better yet, the multi-pack of one-ouncers. According to the BH, these commercial products were developed originally for hospitals and were such a hit (and so frequently lifted by the staff) that the product finally made it to the shelves of CVS in a commercial version that smells a little better.

This prized lotion may have saved my life in Afghanistan this summer. I brought a few multipacks (BJs or Costco style...meaning a couple hundred miniature bottles) and filled every nook and cranny of my luggage with the diminuative lifesavers...and thus was able to pass them around like Pez to local friends, and even doctors and clinics. While everyone was getting sick and blaming it on the food, which is indeed toxic, since no self-respecting 'chef' would serve a dish without blessing it with a few sneezes, The rarest phrase in Dari or Pushto is 'I never get sick,' but I escaped the dreaded Taliban two-step by copious application this prized unguent. On everything, from hands and face to dishes and tableware. Yes, everyone laughed but my pit stops in the local hole in the floor were satisfyingly brief, while my chuckling friends rarely had a visit that lasted less than a half-hour. See, it's not the food, I tried to explain, it's the appalling lack of personal hygiene. In a culture where one is kissed, hugged and handwrung at least two hundred times a day (more if you are a Democrat from Florida) fifty handwashings a day just doesn't cut it--you need the magic fluid.

BTW, having been there before I knew that TicTacs, about the same size as the disinfectant, are the real currency of choice, even among terrorists. A tiny container of TicTacs are more valuable than a twenty dollar bill--they think it the most splendid digestive medicine every devised. I had so many boxes (Costco akbhar!) that my luggage rattled like a den of snakes with that rythmic, tell-tale beat with every airport footstep. Everytime I got searched in a Dubai, Lahore or Islamabad, my lightfingered luggage clerk had a little grin...and a new maracas shake to his walk. Unfortunately, when I began to run out of my stash, I found it very difficult to lie ('No, sorry, no more TicTacs') since they would simply pick me up and shake til they heard the telltale sign.

Posted by: John at December 17, 2002 4:54 PM

Mentioning Afghanistan reminded me of the old Army acronym:
the Five F's of illness vectors:
Flies, Fingers, Food, Filth, Feces
It basically tries to keep you aware of the connections.
I also heard that, for the most part, dry surfaces are generally safe; it's moisture that allows bacteria and viruses to thrive.
And what does anyone make of the fact that the average workplace desk surface has more bacteria than the average public toilet seat?

Posted by: nathan at December 18, 2002 4:52 PM

Here in Hong Kong, people (well, males anyway) wash their hands (sometimes) and after a cursory (read: pathetic) attempt at drying them, usually consisting of shaking them for a couple of seconds, leave the toilet, with the result that the door handles are wet from their hands.

The trick is to try and find a dry section on the reverse of the handle and pull the door open with a fingertip to avoid picking up a nice solution of fresh germ concentrate for onward distribution.

Posted by: Jack at March 7, 2003 6:06 AM

Have a look at my new product which allows restroom exit without pain.

Mike

Posted by: Mike Briggs at June 30, 2004 6:16 AM