What ordinary things gross you out?

In My Humble Opinion
21

There’s nothing about a banana to like: nasty texture, nasty flavor, nasty smell. Ugh!

I get grossed out by cooked eggs. It doesn’t bother me if the eggs are an ingredient, like in a cake or something, but seeing a fried egg on a plate squcks me out. Fried chicken fetus! (Yes, I know it’s not really a fetus because it hasn’t been fertilized. No one said the things that gross you out have to be reasonable.)

Honeycombs are enough to make me nauseated. My granny is a natural foods kind of person. (In her fridge, you’ll find a jar of wheat.) She had a honeycomb in her fridge the last time I visited. Something about it made me positively sick to look at it. For some reason, it made me think of a wound.

Oh, God, yes. Last flu season I had this horrifying experience, which I will spoiler-box out of consideration for the squeamish:

There was a woman in the grocery store who was carrying a little plastic bowl into which she hawked and spit her phlegm every few minutes. (I’m actually gagging as I type this.)

I’m glad someone else shares this, because I feel a little weird in being grossed-out by babies. People think it’s absolutely bizarre, if not downright unnatural for a woman to find babies repellant.

But they are gross! Infants are ugly, misshapen little creatures who leak from all orrifices. They smell funny. They make ugly sounds, and have that horrible frog-like motion to their limbs. Once they reach about two years old, they start getting cute, but before that, in the “larval” stage, they’re vaguely disgusting to me.

I’ve never gone ga-ga over a baby the way some of my female friends do, wanting to hold and cuddle it. Actually, I’d prefer not to have to touch it. I’ve had women tell me that eventally, my biological clock will click in and I’ll fall in love with babies, but I’m 29 and it still hasn’t happened.

Now, put me in a room with puppies and you’ll see me go ga-ga.

22

Cleaning shrimp. Totally, totally lost my appetite when I bought the whole shrimp instead of the pre-cleaned ones. Having to twist its nasty head off, yank the multitude of spidery legs off, peel the shell, THEN get that totally disgusting “mudvein” (read "crap shooter) out.
eeeeeeewwwh!!

Way, way to close to cutting bait, except cutting bait isn’t nearly so detailed.

23

Ghack, Lissa. I’ve peeled 'n eaten on many occasions (usually the peeling gets more careless the more beer I drink), so I have probably unwittingly eaten a pound or two of shrimp poo over my lifetime.

24

'Scuse me, you are not Lissa, you are myrnajean. Ghack, anyway.

25

Agreed.

Add on to that millipedes/thousand leggers and the like. All those spindly legs creep me out.

26

Wet yarn. Good God, I’m creeped out just thinking about it. I cannot take a wet afghan out of the dryer. I can listen to fingernails on a blackboard all day, but wet yarn just squicks me right out. Gaaahhhh!!!

27

Men with long fingernails. Double so, if they are long and dirty. Gives me the willies.

Cat puke, not the ‘she ate too fast and hacked up the food’ stuff, but the long hairy logs.

Newspaper too…the smell!

Bad breath. I work with a lady who has breath that has peeled paint. She won’t chew gum (she tried it when she was 4 and didn’t like it (she’s 63 now)); she doesn’t like mints or hard candy, basically anything that would make her breath smell better. She occasionally uses these drops that make her breath smell like a Christmas cookie, but it doesn’t last long enough. Did I mention she was a space invader, a mouth breather and hasn’t seen a dentist in 20 years?

28

I’ll going along with the doing dishes / touching food thing. Especially tomato sauce. What is it about tomoto sauce, which I love to eat, that smells so foul when it’s being washed off a plate? Blecch. For that matter, I have too many food related grossouts to mention.

I also get the honeycomb thing and will add to that wasp’s nests. Same idea, I guess. Certain buildings give me extremely oogy feelings, such as this one. Yikes, I got in a cold sweat just looking at that picture :confused:

29

Seconded on the feel of chalk. I’ve been dubbed the official chalkboard sign person at work since nobody else has (by their own admission) enough artistic talent to do it. But I have to use a chalk holder because the feeling of chalk on my hands makes my skin crawl. When I did gymnastics as a kid I absolutely HATED having to use that powdered chalk stuff.

Also, I can’t stand men with long nails either. Totally gross.

30

I hate the word “slacks” (as in pants). My husband knows this and will always say slacks when he means pants. I told him it was irrational, but I always picture men’s polyester pants from the 70s when I hear that word. It could be the “wild and cray guys” sketch from SNL. I think they said “slacks”.

Also:

  1. dryer lint–I hate touching it

  2. cat litter–I have to shower after I change the litter because of the dust that flies around after

  3. feet–mine are okay, but if someone’s feet (bare, socks or shoes–doesn’t matter) touches my pillow, I have to change the pillowcase

  4. when my husband puts a dish in the sink and runs the water, then puts a spoon or fork in the water, it sickens me to have to take it out when I’m loading the dishwasher

  5. the smell of baby formula–there’s nothing like it and it makes me sick

  6. baby poop–sometimes smells like eggs even though she’s only on formula right now. How that much stink comes from an 11 pound baby, I’ll never know!

For me, it’s the smell of peanut butter when there’s still some on the knife and it’s in the soapy water. ::shiver::

31

I can’t stand the feel of flour. Baby powder OK, flour not OK?!?

I also hate the feeling of cleansers like Ajax which are gritty.

32

Anything slimy or gooey on my fingers. I hate making eggs for this reason.

A few months ago I had to serve my students ice cream out of a huge 20-gallon container, and the ice cream melted and coated my hands up to my wrists with sticky, slippery goo as I scooped out bowl after bowl of ice cream – shuuuudddeer I was writhing inside the entire time.

33

In the same vein as babies, pregnant bellies. Freaks the crap outta me. I think it might have something to do with them seeming so fragile to me. Oh, and the belly button getting all weird looking doesn’t help matters, because I find many of them gross (especially when someone digs out lint or crud, EW! That is not something that should be done in the presence of another person, ever.) as well.

The idea of a handkerchief. Why would you keep something that you’ve snotted in?! Just thinking about it getting crusty and sitting in a pocket until it gets washed makes me gag!

That commercial with “Digger the Dermadophite.” You know, where he rips up the toenail? Have to change the channel everytime.

And this isn’t exactly the same type of thing as the OP, but close. I cannot touch velvet or anything remotely like it. Makes me feel like my skin is crawling. I feel like it’s going to get under my nails (ew!) so I intstinctively ball my fists up to shelter my nails. Hotel fuzzy blankets are the worst! Give me the scratchy, rough, cheap ones anytime.

There’s more, but I forget many of them until I see them, and the gross-out surprises me, making the effect even worse.

34

Wet yarn- check
Newspaper- check. It’s really the ink transferring to my hands-- blech!
Phlemy voice- check. I instinctively clear my own throat when speaking to Miss/Mr Phlem.

I’ll add-
People who get that build up of foamy spit at the corners of their mouth. YUCK

GLITTER! It is made by the devil, and every greeting card with glitter I receive is cussed at when I open the envelope. My closest relatives know to never buy a glitter card, but I wouldn’t dare mention it to my in-laws. They’d think I’m crazier than I already am.

Some of you don’t like babies. I don’t like to touch old people. I MUST scrub my hands thoroughly after visiting my grandmother’s nursing home. Oh, and I get to give her a manicure today. AAAAIIIIEEEEEE! I know it sounds mean, but I just get squicked. I can’t help it.

35

Fingernails on a chalk board? Feh! Child’s play. The sound, or even the thought of the sound, of someone chewing rubber, on the other hand, is enough to make me confess to any atrocity. For some reason, just thinking about someone chewing a rubber band or a balloon literally makes my teeth itch.

36

I’m a MOM and I’m grossed out by babies. Sometimes someone will show me a real clean one and I’ll be able to fake it. The day I got left home alone with Second-Grade Caricci for the first time, I gazed into his gooey little eyes and said, “You’re the ugliest baby I’ve ever seen.”

That hocking in a bowl at the supermarket story is pretty horrifying, btw.

37

Oh, yeah, that too. I have a much younger sister who used to cut my grandmother’s toenails for $5 when she was little. I’d let my son starve to death, god forbid, before making that $5. It’s the toenail and the old lady both, really, that are the problem here. It was a yellow toenail, of course.

38

My Gram used to pay me $20 to cut her toenails. I loved my Gram but, c’mon it’s old people toenails - no way would I have done it for a fiver.

39

This grosses me out too! It’s why my husband does most of the dishes. Dishes are my absolute most hated household chore, mostly because of the gross wet food particles.

40

Double Whammy!!

Just for you, Argent Towers!!

:smiley: