From the one-ups-manship beginning in this thread… How germophobic aren’t you? What ave you done (or do you do) that would make others shudder?
I’m a field biologist. I poke around in all kinds of stuff, from rotting carcasses to piles of shit, that would give a lot of people pause. (Not that I enjoy it, I just don’t mind it particularly.) And camping in the jungle for weeks on end kind of precludes being very picky about your food or toilet facilities. (The latrines at our camp in the Mt. Doudou swamp became quite . . . interesting . . . after a month of rain.)
On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most tolerant, I’m probably a 10.
I can’t top Colibri, but I did once take a lunch break in the middle of antelope-skinning. My sole concession to hygiene was to wipe my bloody hands on my pants (pants that were probably dirtier than the inside of a pronghorn).
Pretty much anything done on a hunting trip would gag a germophob, tho.
Doesn’t particularly bother me to eat things I dropped on the floor.
I eat stuff I’ve dropped on the floor AND stuff I’ve found in the couch cushions. My husband is entirely grossed out, but I don’t care at all.
BTW, I very rarely get sick. I’m crazy about keeping my hands clean, but I don’t obsess over what I touch or eat.
Is anyone going to able to top hanging out by choice at Mt. Doudou?
Yesterday I found a jelly bean on the kitchen floor. All the jelly beans were pretty much eaten up by the end of the day on Easter. And this particular one looked like it had been stepped on. So: week-old jelly bean, lying on floor, has been stepped on.
But it was red, so I ate it.
Well, being Jewish, I’ve always been a little concerned since reunification about a resurgence of their influence in European affairs…
oh…GERMophobic.
Oh yeah, I’da eaten it, too.
Me, too. Jelly beans, like Pez, have no expiration date.
At work we sometimes eat leftovers from customers. Hey, I for one am not gonna let fucking filet mignon go to waste!
I’ve been known to rub the grimy snot encrusted face of a toddler with my bare thumb, lick it (the thumb) for more solvent and rub again.
Mmmmm…baby snot. Nothin’ sweeter!
Last week a friend of mine received a grapple (an apple that tastes oddly grape like) as part of his birthday present. We passed the grapple around and everyone had a bite or two. I was towards the end of the line, so four or five people had taken part in it before me. Didn’t bother me as much as it probably should have.
That settles it. I am NEVER having kids.
Things parents do involving small kids don’t really count, IMO.
What do you do with a kid with Cheeto dust all over his face and hands?
Lick it off, of course.
See? Doesn’t count.
And… Mt. Doudou?
My doctor dad and nurse mother brought us up that we “had to eat a bushel [of dirt] before we die”. Thus we were encouraged to eat food if dropped on the floor, after a perfunctory brush. This practice is called “disconfection”. This had serious intent, as they wanted us to build up our immune systems while very young.
Also, “your skin is mostly waterproof” was another rule, so if you had to stick your hand down the toilet for plumbing or key-dropping reasons, don’t sweat it, just wash thoroughly afterwards. Also, we four kids in the UK in the 1970s, bathed once every three days and shared bathwater. Though it should be noted that I wouldn’t consider this now and shower daily.
However, in my travels in Asia, I’ve had to endure filth of unimaginable quantities, unhygienic foods and so on. Though I insist on bottled water. I just get on with it and don’t worry, probably thanks to how I was brought up, for which I’m thankful. I do get sick every now and again, but nothing terrible.
Yeah, definitely small kids increase your gross tolerance. I’ve been known to take food that my daughter has chewed up and spat into my hand and pop it into my mouth b/c I’m too lazy to get up and go to the trash can.
I live in Africa.
My rice is half black. When I cook it, I must spend the better part of an hour picking out the bugs. I cannot throw it out because my neighbors will know and make fun of me.
I don’t worry if I run out of toilet paper because I have mastered the “plastic tea kettle and left hand” method. Also, pit latrine? No problem!
I don’t even flinch any more when a cockroach flies into my living room.
I was once sick as a dog, at work. I had to be at work, for reasons too complicated to go into. Show up that day, or don’t show up ever again.
A co-worker took pity on me and brought me ice cream. A blob of it fell off the spoon and landed on the floor of the break room. Reasoning that I was already sick and the floor was cleaned every day, I picked it up with my hand. “The part that touched the floor is still on the floor,” I informed second co-worker, who was horrified.
Another time, I was at a party. I was famished and eating from a huge can of potato sticks. Other people were helping themselves as well, and then the host’s dog stuck his snout into the can. Well, people had already been touching the potato sticks, so I scraped out the level that had had dog contact, put it on a plate for him, and resumed eating. I love potato sticks.
While on a camping trip, a group of us explored a 45-some-odd year old relic of a house that had burned down. We found the pantry and there were some old tin cans (labels long gone), some of which were intact rather than being rusted through and empty of all but dessicated rattling things.
Yeah, I opened one, found pears, and ate them.