It seems that every culture and every time has its bogeyman, it's great all-encompassing fear that dictates the actions of the hordes of lemmings until something better comes along. The God-fearing folk of Salem had their witches, the people in the 50's had their Commies, and the French have the rest of the world.
Today, the invincible enemy seeking to ruin civilization is, for many people, germs. Ironic, since this is the first time in history people don't regularly die from the swarm of malicious micomarauders whose only goal is to use us to spread themselves around, even if it kills us. Sure, it's still pretty bad in the 3rd world, but in developed countries you have a pretty piss poor chance of dying of a disease, even AIDS (which wouldn't even have been a concern two hundred years ago with Plague, Typhoid, Cholera, and Small Pox bouncing around).
As a result, a society of hypochondriacs is sterilizing and anti-bacterializing everything they can get their hands on. I'm all for vaccination and treating sewer water, but some things people do in their fear of germs are just plain silly, if not counterproductive. Take the long-held idea of washing one's hands after going to the bathroom. I'm not talking about when you drop your nutty friends off at the pool. When you have the green apple splatters, you probably should wash your hands, since you don't want to contaminate anything with fecal bacteria (even though you can find said bacteria just about EVERYWHERE in the real world).
Number one, though, is a different story. I don't know about the rest of you horn-dog crackheads, but my one-eyed submariner is probably the cleanest, best-kept part on my body. It doesn't even have the chance to get germs, since it never comes in contact with anything or anyone that may have cooties.
Sigh. Now I'm getting depressed.
"But what about the piss?" says the pimply geek in row four.
Piss is sterile, numbnuts. Urine is 100% germ free when it exits your body and therefore doesn't pose a threat to anyone. I kind of wish it would, though, because those sick bastards who drink it all the time make me want to puke. On top of that, through 26 years of study, I've developed the sublime skill of not getting piss on my hands when I wring out my bladder. I'll grant, though, that in uppity circles it might be considered impolite to fail to wash your hands afterwards, and it doesn't really hurt anything…usually.
Which brings us to PUBLIC RESTROOMS (cue scary music). Figure that when you flush the toilet or urinal, every single person before you has done the same thing. Statistically, a fair number of those people were not terribly sanitary, and I can guarantee that at least on them had herpes or hepatitis or something like that.
"Uh oh," you say, "I'd better wash my hands!" And so you reach down and turn on the faucet that dozens of disease-ridden, feces-covered, hairy-palmed hands have done before (not counting your own stinky pair). So you wash your hands, hopefully washing away your own filth and everyone else's. Then what do you do?
You touch that same faucet again to turn off the water! Everything you just got OFF your hands is right back on! Don't even THINK about hitting the button on that blow-dryer! So not only have you essentially done nothing but pick up the cooties of God-only-knows how many people, but they're on your finger tips. The next time you rub your eyes or nose or mouth, you're rubbing those germs right into your body. I admit, though, I do wash my hands after the public bathroom, mostly because of the years of programming at the hands of the Viet Cong.
Armed with this knowledge, you can freely do your business in a public restroom and leave without washing your hands. If someone challenges you and says, "Don't you know anything about hygene?" You can proudly say, "YES!"
Then you have to open the bathroom door, though. Try not to feel the billions of microbes from dozens of hands squirming under your grip as you pull it open. Maybe you should just buy a really big box of latex gloves.
I love messing with hypochondriacs.
