Noli me tangere

It’s full-on germ season now in Chicago. There’s no pretending otherwise. People on the bus sneeze, wipe their noses on their hands, then use the same hand to hold on to the pole. Ew. People on the train have deep, serious coughs, barely cover their faces, then touch the handles on the back of seats. Oh, shudder.

I keep alcohol based hand sanitizer in my backpack, in the front pocket, ready for the second I step off the bus. Slide left arm out of strap, spin bag over right shoulder onto my front, freak out, fumble for tube of sanitizer, breathe relief.

Or not.

During one of the bag whipping motions as I stepped off the bus, I realized, “To get the hand sanitizer, I touch my backpack with my dirty hands." And then further light dawned, "Wait, I touch my hand sanitizer with dirty hands.” I decided to pretend like this would not bother me. But it does. Of course it does.

To further entangle my consternation over germ annihilation, Matthew laughingly pointed out to me, “Hey, to get your hand sanitizer, you have to touch your purse with dirty hands!” This is not funny. No one should ever, ever joke about germs.

I whined and bobbed and weaved in response, “I know! It totally grosses me out so I’m pretending not to think about it!”

He laughed.

Here’s the other conundrum. Is it better to leave my gloves on when I ride the bus so my actual hands aren’t touching the bus rails? Or is touching with gloves worse since I don’t wash my gloves as often as I wash my hands? Think about it. I put my gloves on clean hands. I grip the bus pole with my gloves. I use my bare, naked, exposed hands to remove the gloves, thereby touching the gloves, which touched the pole.

This is horrible. There is no absolute solution to the germ transference issue. I touch the purse to touch the hand sanitizer bottle to sanitize my hands, then touch the bottle and touch the purse to put it away. I touch the gloves the gloves touch the pole, and then I touch the gloves that touched the pole.

I am so screwed.