I can trend towards germophobia. I’m much, much better than I was in New York (“oh no germs everywhere!”) but I still wash my hands a lot and I don’t like touching door handles and I take my shoes off at home and I purell everything after putting gas in the car.
But every so often, a lightbulb comes on over my head and I realize some thing I do every day is probably totally covered in germs.
Communal M&M bowl at work, with everyone’s fingers in it all day? Oops. (But come on…cinnamon M&Ms!)
The lock on a bathroom stall – you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to process that this is not just touched by me when I come in with clean hands…but by everyone leaving the stall, who invariably all have disgusting germy hands!
And my latest one, that I really just realized yesterday: Coke cans.
- It looks so smug. But I know the truth now.
That lip you drink from, where drops of soda always collect…I mean, who hasn’t grabbed a can of Coke at a picnic and wiped off that part, because it’s dusty or damp with condensation or it’s just a force of habit? But yesterday I realized – that is a part of the OUTSIDE of the can. That part is exposed to the world, to the factory machines, to grimy people handling it, to dogs…maybe licking it? Maybe? Who knows what’s been happening to it in the time it took for this can to get from the factory to the Jolly King liquor store where I bought it?
The Cameraphone Diaries 