MamaKat's Writer's Workshop has prompted: "Hi, my name is ______ and I am a _______." ...so here I go.
Please also go visit my friends over at DadBlogs this week for FatherHood Friday.
Daddys are awesome. We help make Mommies. Most of the time.
By the way, this post is dedicated to Holly. I had the revelation for this idea minutes after meeting her.
Read into that what you will.
I've never eaten a booger. This being my blog and not needing to impress to any great degree, I can tell the truth. I've never eaten a booger, but I saw friends do it when I was younger, and they didn't seem to think anything of it. When I saw a classmate in high school do it, however, I immediately knew there was something not quite right with the lad.
I had a recollection and a revelation recently, about Gross, and it's evolution.
When I was in college, home was a small town in Colorado for a number of years during the '80s. Money was tight, so activities consisted of a $5 pizza from Blackjack, trying to impress the freshmen at the local dorm, or...one last one...that I now shudder to recall.
It was called My Tubbery. A business. A small building filled with individual rooms that contained hot tubs to be rented. By the half hour. I can think of multiple dates, and girlfriends, that My Tubbery entertained. And I think back to those blissful, bubbling tubs, and my ignorance.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth. And I may again.
I'm sure the chlorine killed some of what we luxuriated in, but today I'm pretty sure I would have a problem partying in a used condom.
It's one of life's great ironies...by the time you realize how profoundly terrible something is, most times you've already done it, stepped in it, eaten it, or worse. I've spent a thousand nights in hotels, from the hi-falutin' to the hovel, and yet it took the majority of my life before Dateline thought to take me on a tour of one with a blacklight.
I'm considering boiling myself in acid.
Ignorance really is bliss, my friends, and a helluva lot more fun than the sanitizer-toting obsessive compulsive I see in the mirror today. Early adulthood taught the "5-second rule". Kids have an "infinite second" rule, which I continued in college. Today when I see my son eat something from the floor, knowing our beagle has been marching there minutes before on her poo-dipped paws, I have to resist the urge to take a wire brush to his tongue and make him gargle with Clorox.
Ultimately, though, the evolution itself is killing me much more than any airborne carcinogen. I miss that ignorance, and there is no going back. My destiny is to finish out my days in a level 5 biohazard unit having friends and family push my favorite soaps to me through the airlock.
I've evolved, you see. I grew up. And it sucks. Hard.
As I write this, I sit on a flight with my exponentially more hygienic wife winging our way to one of the dirtiest cities (figuratively and literally) in the US, Las Vegas. I note the airline blanket I thoughtlessly draped across my legs as I sat down. As soon as I did, my pretty wife kindly pointed out how disgusting I was. And I now wonder, despite the fact that the blanket is touching the skin of my legs, if I will have the courage to use two fingers to drop it to the floor.
Maybe I could use my elbows.
COPYRIGHT HALFTIME LESSONS 2008, 2009
All rights reserved. This content may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the author.
Posts
33 comments:
You TOUCHED an airplane blanket! DUDE! You are going to get the cooties. I know about these things.
Next, you are probably going to tell me you'll walk barefooted in a hotel room.
I just lost my appetite.
Oh i know just what you mean. We were at ana musement park this summer and for the first time ever as i touched the railing while waiting iin line...i literally became ill thinking about what i was posibly touching. I immediately got out the sanitizer and did not touch another railing all day long! The older i get the more this bothers me...as a kid i could have cared less!
I can't believe there was a place you could rent a hot tub for the hour.... That is too crazy.
Germs are everywhere. We sort of embrace them : ) Sort of.
Have fun in Vegas!
Just building immunity, right?
Right?!
And the blanket - don't both you guys work in healthcare?
i think PERHAPS it's a good thing you are not a kindergarten teachers.
Boogers are our business.
I used to work as a hotel maid and let me tell you my gross meter is off the hook now.
Your wife is right never touch the blankets.
LMAO...oh my oh dear...
as soon as you get to your hotel strip off that thing they call a 'bedspread' those are NASTY!
Yeah...I have second thoughts about the intelligence of hitch hiking with 2 friends in Ocean City, MD. Especially when we got picked up in a van by some hippies who gave us wine...btw, I was 14.. So proud....NOT
Thank you for nailing my front door shut on me Jay! I have a little mantra that I chant to my children (within reason). "God made dirt so dirt don't hurt. But remember, he taught people how to make soap too."
Works for us.
I HATE hot tubs. Always have. Gag. Sitting in other people's sweat. Eek.
If you wiggle just right, the blanket will fall to the ground. But now I am thinking I should bring my own blankie and pillow for a 12 hour flight I am about to take!
back in the 80s i too went to one of those hot tub places with all the rooms! hahaha! nasty, but at the time fun!
I have eaten a booger. But it's been a very, very long time!!
that has to be one of the grossest things I have ever heard of *shudder*...I think I need to shower just reading about it.
I think after using an airplane blanket, you are an official bio-hazard.
Eww.
Ewww.
And more ewww.
I am actually more grossed out by the airline blanket and the hotel room than the memories of The Tubbery.
Now I need to go wash my hands.
I just don't get grossed out that easily. Think about how little people knew about sanitation and the like for thousands of years, yet here we are, still thriving as a species. I mean, I don't go out of my way to touch nasty stuff, but I also don't worry too much about the germs around us. But, the Tubbery does sound disgusting. My moral and hygienic sensibilities are offended.
You hit the nail on the head. It's an evolution.....being blissful unaware of all the grossness out there is infinitely better than knowing.......
P.S. Your example is great for showing my husband (who is worse than I am) why We shouldn't get a dog. Ever. :)
BLICK!!! Funny how when you are younger you don't think about that kind of thing. Now the idea of private hot tubs makes my skin crawl.
I don't even want to know what happened with the black light.
*shudders
we are toomuch alike...but not for the fact that i ate boogers. can i say that i still do once in awhile if there's nowhere to fling it. it's much better lying in my intestines that on the floor of my car. don't fucking tell anyone this
one last thing...at least im not dying from sexual hot tub diseases. im just recycling my boogers. kapeesh?!
The hot tub place.....those are illegal here!!!
Awesome post my bloggy friend....as always!
I didn't know you were such a girl. :-P
I think you need to eat a booger!
*sigh*
i used to be like you. then along came childbirth.
won't go into the details. i don't want you to barf in your mouth anymore. ;)
One time, I laid on a hotel room carpet to do my exercises.
I'm probably going to die now.
thanks...thanks a lot....now I am going to take a Clorox shower....
I love the way that you wrote this despite the disturbing context of the story.....the blacklight in the hotel was one of the most sickening things I have ever seen as well.
I'm told if you just pee in the shower, you can cure yourself of all the environmental germs of the day.
I wonder what we did before hand sanitizer!
Back in college we used to go on spring break down on Cape Cod and cram as many people into one cheap hotel room as humanly possible. One year we got the cost down to $15/night/person and the place had a jacuzzi. We were stoked, and drinking. Thinking back on it, I may join you in that acid bath.
OH, you just brought back memories of Sycamore Springs, a hot tub wonderland on the side of a hill near San Luis Obispo where we used to go. We had a friend who worked there, so any tub that wasn't booked and paid for, we could use for free. It was at night and the tubs were in a wooded area, so we couldn't see well . . . i shudder to think what might have been in there. Truly the definition of gross.
BTW, a friend told me on Tuesday night that blankets were removed from planes because of swine flu fears. She didn't mention a particular airline. I thought it was all airlines. Perhaps not. Or perhaps your airline didn't get the memo.
JHS
Colloquium
The Rising Blogger
I can't believe there was a place you could rent a hot tub for the hour...
Work From Home
That is gross.
I'm assuming you did not meet your wife at The Tubbery.
God help you.
:-)
Hilarious and Gross. Jay, I didn't know you had started blogging again. Next time I need an email update! Glad to have you back!
Post a Comment