The dog-jizz-pipette-sucking story is just fucking vile. That one will pretty much do it for me. Even worse than my ripped-off eyelid.
An uncircumsized man grosses me out.
Seeing as that mouth-pipetting, even Salmonella spp., doesn’t actually gross me out, I have to mention what does. Obviously keep in mind that as a former biology major and microbiologist – micro labs stink like hell to “normal people” but they didn’t faze me one bit, and as a kid I belonged to Dissection Club. I think watching televised surgeries is fascinating too, and at my first lab job I used to help the Tox people necropsy rats in my first lab, when I was caught up enough with my own work in Micro. There’s only one thing that can gross me out – and I found it very useful.
The ONE thing in the world that WILL gross me out, and rather quickly might I add, is – the SMELL of VOMIT. Not the sight of it, not the sound of someone vomiting in the bathroom, just the SMELL. I can deal with the smell of anaerobic bacteria and decontaminated biowaste fresh hot out of the autoclave no problem, but this, no way.
Now how in hell was this ever “useful,” you might ask? Well…in my wild and nefarious youth (ages 16-21), I used to drink a lot (so much for liquor laws against underage drinking, huh?). The thing was, when I reached my limit, I didn’t black out, pass out or dance with lampshades on my head (I did weirder things than this, I assure you). However, eventually I’d hit a certain point at which my head would spin and I’d get sick to my stomach.
The first time this happened, while I did make it to the bathroom on time, my only prior experience with up-chucking resulted not only in feeling grossed out by the vomiting itself, but in still feeling sick even afterwards (because prior to this, the only times I ever threw up was when I had bona fide 24- or 48-hour stomach bugs!). So here I was kneeling by the toilet (just in case) trying to fight it – to no avail. Was awful while doing it of course, but this time when I was FINISHED, I actually felt BETTER. SO…I developed the following ritual:
The moment my head would begin to spin when I’d been drinking, I’d get myself in the bathroom and put my hair up (it was, and is, halfway down my back) to keep it out of the way. Then I’d kneel before the Porcelain God and, to encourage the inevitable (I didn’t and probably never will have the nerve to stick my finger down my throat), I would summon up my memories of the smell of vomit; it was the only thing that could gross me out enough to make me retch. In moments, I could “smell it in my mind” and I’d actually BE retching, the real odor would be there and THAT would keep me going for as long as I had to. Then when finished, I’d get up, flush the toilet fast, brush my teeth, brush my hair, and I was feeling so much better. AND, another benefit of this I discovered was that it prevented hangovers – barfing out all the excess booze seemed to get it out of the rest of my “toxin-processing” system – the liver takes hours, but puking is a lot faster.
So grossing out can not only be fun, but useful.
This tops the list for me. For some reason, I have a special aversion to shit. I wish waste could just be magically transported out of our bodies, instantaneously broken down to its component molecules and scattered throughout the universe by some matter-transporter mechanism. I’ve cleaned up after dogs, and I expect I’ll have to change a few diapers someday. This I can accept. But people who get off on shit, who like to smell shit, eat shit, touch shit, be shat upon… I can’t deal with this.
Another thing is mopwater. In highschool I worked at McDonald’s, and I had to mop the floors a few times. I’m having a hard time trying to think of a way to describe it without gagging. It got thicker and milkier the more times I wrung out the mop and there was a moldy, greasy, but distinctly sweet smell. Horrible. Vile. Awful.
Better not come to Europe then…
Oops sorry - my last post was in reply to the above :o
:eek:
Well, first let me tell you what FREAKS me out–my real name is Melanie (my nickname is Mel too) and I was planning on starting this very same thread today!
cue Twilight Zone music
As for things that gross me out–TEETH. Not while they are firmly attached inside the mouth doing their normal thing, but when they are loose, bleeding, broken or falling out. I even have reoccuring dreams about my teeth falling out. Yeech. A few months ago, my son fell and broke one of his front teeth completely in half. After about 5 minutes, he’d stopped crying and was happily playing while I was on the phone with the dentist and trying to keep myself from passing out at the sight of half his tooth lying there. shudder
On Emergency Room (I’m not sure what it’s really called – it’s on TLC) last week, they brought a guy in who fell off a roof and landed on a branch, which went directly up his rectum. He was on the gurney with this huge branch lodged in, and sticking out of, his ass. I couldn’t finish watching the show so I’m not sure of the internal damage but they were very worried about a whole lot of organs being damaged.
I hate when that happens.
Dead insects. Live ones are fine, I don’t mind spiders, I don’t mind if an insect falls on me. But dead insects are really, really nasty and make me shudder. Especially when they go on their back with their legs curled up. Bhurr, gross.
People cracking their knuckles make me plug my ear. Very bothersome.
But, like others in here, eye stuff freaks me out. I decided never to have laser surgery after a friend told me about the resultant “flaps.”
Yeah, the dog story was icky, but the other?
ew!ew!ew!ew!ew! They’re scraping his eye?!? With sharp metal instruments? Brugh! Augh! [sub]oh, man alive![/sub]
I’ve had surgury on both my eyes (cataract removal and lens implant) under local anesthesia. That was pretty weird, but I was too far gone to care.
Still, anything involving eyes gives me the creeps. I think contact lenses are the most disgusting invention ever, and I have absolutely no idea how people can yank back their face and shove these tiny pieces of plastic into their eyes every day. Those are your eyes, people!
Also, oysters.
Yeah, I bet that was an accident, all right.
I heard tell from a friend of mine that he once heard tell of a guy who did something terrible eye-related. Stop now if easily squeamish-ified.
Apparently he was out in the boondocks somewhere working on his truck by himself. He was working on the brakes, doing something to them (details escape me). At some point, something went Terribly Wrong, and he ended up with a fiber of the brake pads (made of carbon fiber, I reckon? Damn, I’m using the word “reckon” a lot lately.) stuck into one of his eyeballs. As a reaction to the intense pain, he pulled said fiber out of his eyeball, at which point it deflated. His eyeball, not the fiber. Deflated!
To make matters worse, he apparently did not have a phone with him, so he had to hie himself to a hospital. Problem was, he had to finish the brake job before he could be on his merry way. With a Deflated Eyeball and, I’m sure, associated Searing Pain.
Of course, for how much I really know about it, it could very well be an urban legend. Somebody find the truth, I’m too damn lazy. I reckon.
I thought the second one was actually worse than the first one. I would die!
Maybe I’m just a bit weird, but reading that and then looking at the poster’s name threw me into a fit of laughter that still has my sides hurting.
Maybe I just need a drink.
Anyway, very little bothers me. Blood, guts, gore, vomit, crap, etc is the same as a hallmark card. But there are three things that I can’t take.
#3. Maggots. I hate em. My stomach turns if I have to look at just one, much less thousands of them massing in a feeding frenzy. If maggots meant saving a limb, I think I might opt for amputation.
#2. Food in a sink. I’m a slob. I drink out of the carton and many times think anything stiffer than soup can be finger food. But even if it was food that I was eating just 30 seconds ago, once it is in the sink and I’m doing dishes, even the feel of a bean or noodle in the water causes me to shrink, dance a bit, make faces, and get tools to scrape everything down the drain. The few times I’ve to unclog a disposal were not pretty. If it hasn’t touched water though, it’s okay, even if it is growing mold.
#1. Boogers. Not snot, not loogies, but boogers. Mother of GOD I hate boogers. The sight of another person’s booger messes me up. And… I can barely even write it… god help me if it hits a mouth. I looked over at my daughter the other day just as she pulled a finger out of the nose and put it in her mouth. I almost bazooka barfed on the spot and was heaving for half an hour. I’ve blown my own nose on occasion and had one get past the tissue and hit my lip, resulting in instant viewing of what I ate for the past three weeks. Even writing about them makes my throat close up.
Fresh blood or injuries (even to the eye) don’t gross me out. I’ve done some first aid and even pulling lots of pieces of glass out of an old woman’s stinky scaly foot didn’t bother me.
However: Used bandaids! Ewwwwww. In a pool…in the drain of the shower in the locker room…I want to throw up just writing this. I don’t know why.
That’s funny, an uncircumsized woman grosses me out.
For some reason this thread is cracking me up!!
The main thing that grosses me out is anything slimy, especially spit in any form. Sometimes my own spit grosses me out. It’s OK as long as it’s inside my body…for example, brushing my teeth is a daily struggle. Spitting out toothpaste and saliva makes me gag. Every Time.
And the absolute worst form of spitting?? Spit cups!!! Dear Lord why must I always be sitting by the guy who has a clear plastic spit cup full of brown goo?? It’s even worse if they don’t have a tobacco chew going…why do you need to keep your spit in a cup!!! Then someone always has a story about a friend of a friend who picked up what they thought was a refreshing beverage only to discover it was…you guessed it…SPIT!!!
::hitting submit quickly so I can get this out of my mind::
I can clean up vomit, poop, pee, blood, garbage, all sorts of gross things. But my own personal kryptonite is hair - when it’s not attached to someone’s head (or other body parts for that matter). I can barely clean a brush (gag) or clean out a drain trap in the shower(blegck) or if someone drops clumps of it on the floor like from a brush or just loose hair (uurp) and a single hair in my mouth (urkagurka), forget it. Fur and dust bunny clumps aren’t quite as bad but can still gross me out. Didn’t someone invent a vomiting smilie once? I could use it right about now…