Germ Warfare

I knew it was inevitable after a full seven days of touching things a jillion other people touched, re-breathing air that a jillion other people exhaled, sitting on toilets that a jillion other people sat on, and sleeping in a bed that a jillion other people have slept in. But hope springs eternal in the breast of one who dreads a head cold more than child birth.

Normally, I'm not a germophobe. Normally, I rely on good old fashioned handwashing and a hardy immune system to keep us healthy. I don't use antibacterial products in my home because I really do believe that ultimately, they do more harm than good. And I've never been one of those mothers who wigged out if their kid happened to eat a french fry off of the floor of the local McCrapald's germhaven playland. I'll even admit to having popped a dropped pacifier back into diminutive one's mouth (pre-pubescent one sucked his thumb) without having sanitized it properly.

And when you have boys, you just learn to live with dirt. My boys are outside kids, and they get dirty. Really dirty. And I don't let it bother me as long as it doesn't get tracked all over the off-white Berber carpet and the white tile that the previous owners installed, oblivious to the fact that the crisp clean look they were after wouldn't last long in a house built on a slab in a yard with serious drainage problems and without an entryway or mudroom to speak of.

There is a creek that runs through the neighborhood, and it attracts young boys like moths to a flame. I pride myself on not batting an eyelash when they come home with mud up to their knees bearing turtles, tadpoles and salamanders, despite the threat of salmonella that these critters present. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly devil may care, they even go to bed without a bath, which means that turtle poop germs and god knows what else spends all night colonizing on them.

And you know what? My boys are rarely sick. Could be luck. But maybe not. In general, I think we are sanitizing our kids right into a full blown supergerm crisis. But that's another post.

All that aside, experience, as well as several brief stints in retail where I watched people sneeze into their hands, pick their ass or nose, and then blithely hand me money with nary a thought to the germs they had just deposited on it, has taught me that you have to be prepared to do battle when you go among the masses. So I plan accordingly, and I am merciless.

And yet, here I am, sick. Yep. Some sneaky little germ snuck past the cloud of Lysol, the multiple applications of Purrell, and the antimicrobial body condom. (just kidding, but it's really not that bad of an idea). It probably got in through the fissures in my cracked and bleeding hands. Could Purrell have a higher alchohol content? I could probably just carry around a bottle of Isopropyl Alchohol and save myself some money.

When I try to inhale, all I get is an odd little "skwik" that may or may not be my sinuses caving in under the enormous pressure. When I swallow, I get that weird vacuum seal thing in the back of my throat that happens when you have too much snot and not enough ventilation, and that makes you feel momentarily as if you might actually suffocate. And my body aches in a way I have never before experienced except that one time I did Gunnar Peterson's Full Body Challenge all the way through.

Having a head cold is my idea of hell on earth. Seriously, if I were a spy, all it would take to make me crack like an egg is for my captor to dangle a vial of common cold in my face while taunting "Vee haf vays to make you talk, liebchen."

I'm going to go have relations with my heating pad now. I'll be back when the antihistimine stupor wears off.