I was having lunch with a friend today and described something odd that happened this morning. My dog was in the yard munching on something, and it turned out to be a dead bird. But this bird was about the size of a large chicken, and had been cleanly decapitated. It looked like maybe someone had shot it and was preparing to clean it, and somehow my dog got ahold of it. I didn’t describe the carnage or anything, I was more concerned about whether I should start knocking on doors, asking “Are you missing a dead, headless bird?”
My friend literally (and I do mean literally, for those of you who listed that as a pet peeve) could not finish his lunch. He was so completely grossed out at the thought of my pup munching on someone's kill that he got queasy. I felt so bad I paid for his lunch. It occurred to me that stuff like that just doesn't bother me. I think it's icky, and there are ways I'd prefer to spend my Saturday than wrestling a dead, headless bird from my dog and disposing of the carcass, but it certainly didn't make me want to puke. I've also been known to read autopsy reports over lunch.
I think I must have a pretty high gross-out theshold. How's yours? Judging from some of the threads I've read, I'm betting most of you have high ones, too!
While I don’thave any speicifc tales of High Ickiness to share as proof of my manliness, I’ll admit feeling a certain roll-eyed contempt for people who get freaked out at things, like that imbecile who wrote Time magazine to complain when they put Otzi (the 5,300 year-old “Iceman” found in the Alps) on their cover, in all his dessicated noseless glory.
I remember bugging my high-school science teacher to let me dissect one of the dead guinea pigs in the lab’s refrigerator, but he never did. Maybe he was saving them for Spring Break.
I have been in medical publishing for the last 11 years. The things I see that we call “art” can be pretty grim. I generally don’t eat and look at that stuff, but I don’t get grossed out either.
I can’t think of anything that makes me go ewwww. My husband, on the other hand, had to get up and leave the theater during “Jackass” when bodily fluids became involved.
I would venture a guess that having children toughens you up quite a bit…
I agree with this. As a parent it becomes second nature to smell, wear, catch, wipe, wash and step in, the amazing amount of icky stuff that comes from your child’s body.
Well, depends. I can wade hip-deep in rotting fruit and assorted household garbage and eat a hot cup of noodles at the same time. But bodily fluids, fecal matter, even sometimes cooking meat makes me sick (I breathe shallow when passing a McDonalds–icky). I can hardly be in the same general area as a really big, rancid poopy-pile, especially from a stinky-pooping animal like a cat or several unnamed members of my household and keep my GI tract from doing backflips.
TV’s a different thing. I can see a man get his guts get ripped out from his bleeding abdomen, and apart from decrying the overdone violence, I’ll be more than okay, stomach-wise.
I’ll third the parenthood thing toughening you up. Once you’ve been bathed by every possible bodily fluid and realized that it doesn’t actually kill you, you get kind of blase.
I used to live in NYC, not too far from one of the elevated train lines in Queens. One day someone got hit by the J train, and their foot was laying in the street. The first thing I noticed upon seeing it was that the foot was in a Puma sneaker, and I wondered if it bounced when it hit the ground.
I’ve cleaned up enough blood, shit, and vomit to really not be offended by a whole lot. I’ve found (several times) that a high gross-out threshold is a good quality when you’re with someone who sustains an especially bloody injury. It’s a time for action, not freaking out.
I know there are a lot of people who find things like the “Faces of Death” videos, or pictures on rotten.com, to be horribly offensive. I look at grisly accident photos or footage and realize that we’re no more than meat when the forces of physics are involved. To me they’re all PSAs to not do stupid, reckless things.
Well, considering the fact that I’ve spent more than one spring/summer afternoon picking maggots out of wounds, I’m guessing I’ve got a pretty high gross-out level. Dr. J and I became pretty unpopular dinner companions when he was in med school and I was working at a vet clinic. We’d be having a really interesting discussion about the neat thing he saw at the hospital, or whatever we cut out of a dog that day, and suddenly look up and realize no one around us was eating.
Oh well, most of them could afford to miss a meal or two, anyway, right?
Did you see “blonde?” I couldn’t get that image out of my head for days. That didn’t provoke any nausea, but gawddamn. :eek:
Stuff like surgery only bothers me in that I wince on the patient’s behalf whenever they’re tugging on some tiny little piece of flesh or some such. There is one thing and only one thing that can provoke me to gag or vomit.
I can count on one hand the number of things that have literally disgusted me (as in grossed me out to the point of a foul taste in my mouth) on this board. I’ve been to rotten.com and fugly.com and watched rather invasive surgery on television. I’ve eaten while reading Billy Rubin and lieu’s posts … it takes a lot.
It really depends, sometimes my gross-out threshold is really high… sometimes really low.
Hard to say what it depends on though, I think mainly how full my tummy is at the time. Though eating and talking about stuff doesn’t bother me too much.
Grew up camping, hunting and fishing. Can’t be squeamish gutting a fish/deer/elk/bear/critter of choice. I always cleaned the fish from a young age. Loved chasing my little sister with deer legs and other ‘grotty’ bits
Worked as a nurse for a while, so saw my share of yukkiness. Imagine bathing a man with gangrenous appendages in a whirlpool… Yep - a human stew.
I raised my sisters 2 kids and squeamishness disappears quickly when bodily fluids are flying in every which direction…
Surgery shows are fun to watch. I tried getting my dad to watch a prostate surgery with me so we could discuss what they had done to him… He jumped up and left the room - didn’t come back for quite some time. It freaked him out too much.
I’ve watched a few of my own surgeries. The last one - 2 weeks ago - was really cool cos I watched my tendons wriggle, saw my nerves and bones and such VERY cool that!!
Not much gets to me. I’ve seen a couple of the Faces of Death videos. Been to the websites mentioned above. Roadkill, and obviously intentional abuse to animals (or people) is the only thing that gets to me. Call me a soft in that department, but it always has and always will.
My threshold is pretty much so high it can’t be seen. I’ve gone from draining purulent anaerobic peri-rectal abscesses and gas gangrene directly to lunch.
