Name It After Me

I can’t say that I have ever seen them, or heard them but they sure have made a mess of my life from time to time. I am talking about germs. Well, germs and viruses I suppose and anything else that works invisibly to make my life a living hell.

 

I knew a guy that was trapped in a bathroom for about ten minutes because a guy left without washing his hands had touched the doorknob and he had to wait for someone to come in to the bathroom. Yes, that is a little crazy but I sort of understand what my friend was going through. I know people who don’t stay at hotels because of the germs and other substances that are smeared all over every surface in the rooms. I personally prefer not to think about that at all, and focus on the flat screen TV, the safe and if the beds are comfortable. I don’t need to think about that sweaty, grunting, over weight salesman from Cleveland who picked up a hooker at the Double Down Saloon. Ewww….

 

I have a tolerance for food that has reached and passed its best before date three years ago. How bad can macaroni and powdered cheese get? If there is a fly on the rim of my glass, I just drink from the other side. I don’t even think that it may have circumnavigated the glass while I wasn’t looking. I once picked an earwig out of my full thermos of tea, figuring that the boiling water probably sterilized the thermos. If there were tiny earwig turds floating in the tea, by the time I got round to drinking it they probably would have dissolved. Sometimes it is best just not to think.

 

The other day we went to Denny’s for lunch. The hostess escorted us to our table and told us that our server would be with us presently. We chatted about this and that for a minute and I was in that pre-menu bliss, anticipating a good tasting pleasant meal. My eye began to itch and I lifted my left hand to scratch it. Something wet from the under edge of the table rubbed off of my finger and into my eye! NO! Of course I hadn’t felt my finger was wet or I wouldn’t have rubbed my eye.

It could be just a little water and disinfectant from the rag they used to clean and sterilize the table before we sat down. It could be just a little water that had dribbled from the water glass the previous customers had. It could be the tears of God. I could be where someone had put what he just picked from his nose. Some kid could have sneezed into his germ infested tiny hand and then wiped it on the edge of the table. It could be rat urine for all I knew!

That pre-menu bliss blew away like a fart in a hurricane. Throughout the meal I could feel the germs or virus multiplying just under the bottom lid of my left eye. I think I developed a twitch, but Louise didn’t mention it. Within minutes it would have spread into my blood stream and throughout my body where my white blood cells would be waging a battle royal. I couldn’t taste the food, whether because of depression or early onset of some as yet unnamed disease, I couldn’t tell. Maybe they will name it after me.

I can’t write anymore, it has been three days and I feel a relapse coming on. If I die before tomorrow, thanks for reading, but wash your hands it could have morphed into a computer virus.