Everyone scared me to death about all of the germs in airports and airplanes, so I began my journey to Texas yesterday as an obsessive-compulsive, neutropenic germaphobe. Neutropenia is when your white blood cells are low (below 2.0, I think). When I entered the airport, I immediately began to try to create the maximum space between me and every other potential contaminator, and I kept track of each of the things I touched with my hands. Of course, my cancerbrain forgot the hand-sanitizer I was supposed to bring. My focus of the day was the contemplation of what exactly I should try to avoid, and my conclusion was that I should try to avoid bodily fluids from other people, most often that means specifically avoiding their mucus. There were other bodily fluids I had to avoid too, but I'll get to that later. For now, we are going to go on the germophobic assumption that everything you touch that does not belong to you must have had someone inadvertently smear their mucus accross its entire surface area, and therefore, you must avoid touching it with your hands and then touching your mouth (or touching something on its way to your mouth), because that mucus must contain swarming flagellar pathogens swimming throughout it ravenously hungry for a human being's inerts, whose collective hope in life is to encounter an immune-suppressed germaphobe and rapidly eat each of his cells from the inside out causing him to spontaneously erupt into a pile of plasma, within 10 seconds of contamination, right there where he sits in his tiny airplane seat. To get infected there must be a critical mass of ingested snot globules, which I am going to assume is about three globules. The less things you touch with your hands the better, and the less times you touch your mouth with your hands the better. The exception is that you can touch anything that belongs to you, those things are only covered in your own mucus, which when ingested into your own body just gets reused to coat the lining of some internal organ, or to coat some other thing you come in contact with for someone else to touch and ingest so that they get a chance to see whatever you've got goin' on. Any pathogens that are in your own recently eaten mucus will just join their friends (say, in your hip) and continue with their village-building and body-eating.
The first things my hands touched were the trays that hold your stuff as they go through the x-ray. Once through the x-ray, I went to the shop and perused the selection for an interesting book. Only one book was worth touching, I looked at the back, but decided not to get it. Then I touched one pack of chapstick and a water to carry to the checkout line. Then I impulsively touched a bag of beef jerky in a moment of weakness, which could have seriously been my undoing because later I had to touch all of the beef jerky in the bag with my hands as I put them (along with many globules of foreign mucus) into my mouth. Then I touched the money - the $16! - for the chapstick, water and beef jerky. Then I touched the air-spicket in the airplane, from which shot millions of globules of recycled air from decades of flights, to turn it off.
My seat was chosen: an aisle seat near the wings. There were two empty seats next to me. As luck would have it, an attractive girl of my approximate age chose to sit next to me (coincidence? I think not, I think she likes bald guys). Of course, I allowed the normal introductory period to lapse before saying anything to her (primarily because I did not want my hand contaminated through her mucussy handshake), leaving us in awkward silence the rest of the flight. That turned out to be really good though, because about 5 minutes into the flight, she ended up coughing up junk from her lungs. I figure if we were talking, it would line up our mouths and that would open pandora's box of mucus partical exposure. She did cover her mouth, but she was the only one on the flight coughing! Why, oh why, did the ONE cougher have to sit next to me. And then I think, should I move? If so, should I say something? How weird would it be if I just got up and moved? What does she have in there? - probably avian flu...or maybe tuburculosis...or maybe a new strain of man-eating, mucus-swimming protozoans. There is one seat between us, maybe the globules cannot fly that far? If I move, will I just go to another place that has even more germs? Maybe I should just stick with her mucus, since I've already been exposed to it, yeah, that's what I'll do.
For each cough, I mentally cringe. I decide that this predicament is hillarious, so I take out a spiral to begin writing down the funny stuff so I can put it in my blog:
I estimate 2.5 feet between me and the bugar fountain. How far can those cough particals reach? If snot flies in the same pattern, as say, a volleyball, then it will follow a parabolic pattern. I figure any projectiles initiated at a flat plane exerted with normal force of a simple cough, the mucus should fall safely on my shirt sleeve and pant legs, as well as leaving a glaze on the seat between us. Just in case an imperceivable mist is produced I will hold my breath for 20 seconds. She is covering up her mouth, so, it is definitely all over her hands, but can tiny particals shoot out the side and land near my mouth, like on my lips or something? I didn't FEEL anything land there...or did I? Now I am making myself crazy.I get up to go to the restroom, because I had downed a liter of water. I touched the outer handle, inner latch, the lock, the cold water button, the soap button top, and several paper towels. Back to my seat next to the cute gushing fountain of airborne pathogens.
I wonder if she wonders what I am writing about...and furthermore, wouldn't she be horrified to figure out I am writing about her and her mucus spreads? Well butt out snot queen! You're the one spewing forth chunks of goo, threatening my neutropenic state!!I made it off the flight without the volcanic internal combustion, but I had one more connection to make in Phoenix. Of course, this pale-looking guy comes and sits down in my row (accross the aisle). In a minute, he starts vommitting on himself. He did not avert his head or even attempt at a barf bag. I stood up and moved seats, no regard for rudeness, I just had to move. I sat in my new seat and tried not to think about how many germs I came accross.
In the airport in Texas I went to the restroom and washed my hands until 3 layers of skin came off. Chris picked me up and I ate at Whataburger and it was delicious. Today I will have actual barbeque, which means brisket, cooked up, and I will sit in the blow-up kiddy-pool in the backyard with my friends. True redneck fourth of July.
