Trouble is, I can't remember when it started. All I do know, is that it started as a strategy so rational, so organised. After discovering cat-pooh on the bathroom carpet, (and aware of the germs carried in pet faeces), it seemed so sensible to ban outdoor shoes in the house.
After two bad doses of flu, it seemed so normal to wash my hands carefully after every visit to a toilet (even in my own house).
Somehow, I have morphed into a person who flies into a frenzy if anyone steps past the utility room in outdoor shoes, and provides visitors with indoor thick socks to wear (to their embarrassment).
I have morphed into a person who avoids touching any surface in public toilets with my bare hands. I use my sleeve to open and shut the cubicle, my coat-tails to grasp the heavier external door, toilet tissue to hold down the flush lever. And then I wash my hands three times and dry them with my own tissue kept in my coat pocket.
This all wastes a lot of time. At work, I keep Milton Steriliser fluid in the kitchen cupboard to rinse my mug at the end of the day. (It does a magical job of removing tea stains, too). I grasp the door handles with hand towel papers to make my exit. I turn up the bottoms of my trousers so that they don't touch the toilet floor.
Periodically, I clean my desk with Milton Steriliser fluid, which takes the shine off the surface.
Now that I've put all that down, it doesn't seem so bad, somehow. I don't think I'll seek help just yet.
Now even allowing for some authors licence that does seem a bit too much. Trouble is that you are now home base for every bug in the book without many anti-bodies for defence. My mum, who had a saying for everything was given to declare that 'we all have to eat a peck of dirt before we die'.
ReplyDeleteSurvival of the fittest, Booklover. Eat some dirt.
Eat Dirt!!! Oh no!
ReplyDeleteYou have really made me chuckle!