Washing my hands of the whole thing

A buddy of mine recently told me a cautionary tale that I feel compelled, in the public interest, to pass along. You probably haven’t heard this story yet because, unlike most cautionary tales, this one doesn’t involve Taco Bell, spinach or Mel Gibson.

At a recent rock concert, the band stopped playing mid-song as a spotlight suddenly beamed down onto a poor young soul coming out of the men’s restroom.

The lead singer pointed at him and asked, “What color is the soap in the men’s bathroom?”

Frozen like an unhygienic deer in a single giant headlight, the kid couldn’t come up with an answer, revealing to the entire concert-going crowd that his grooming habits left a wee bit to be desired. The merriment enjoyed by the audience at this kid’s expense will likely live on through years of intensive therapy.

So now you have a great question to ask, say, your father-in-law the next time he comes back from the restroom. And if anyone ever nails you with that question, you should probably guess pink, unless you actually know the answer, which of course you wouldn’t unless there was another person in the bathroom for whom you were showing off.

More people would know the correct answer if public bathrooms were entirely foot-operated. Unless you happen to be in a restroom on the turnpike with magical, sometimes-functional sensing devices, you are still faced with the issue of touching the sink again to turn the water off after you wash your hands. We can stage putting a man on the moon, but we can’t invent a foot-operated sink? People have already proven themselves ready for such a technology. We’ve mastered flushing and even putting the seat up and down using a technique similar to the one employed by the Karate Kid to knock out the blond dude from Cobra Kai.

I guess I’ve been thinking about hand washing more than usual lately, as I just spent the holidays hanging out with family. To say that our families are a bunch of sick individuals was even truer than usual this time. Disease was the gift that kept on giving this Christmas. Giving phlegm, I mean. Just as I was considering renting scuba equipment so that I wouldn’t have to keep sharing air with those people, my immune system finally surrendered. As I walked into the kitchen and sneezed, there was a moment straight out of a zombie movie.

“Oh, no. He’s been infected, too. Get away! Get away!”

Colds weren’t even the worst thing going around. The snifflers were the lucky ones. Both my dad and mother-in-law came down with what we suspect to be a norovirus, a particularly nasty little gastrointestinal bug named after the location of one of its first known outbreaks: Norwalk, Ohio (Welcome to Norwalk! Keep a clean trash can by the john.) It’s never a good thing to have a malady like that named after your town. Just ask the residents of Old Lyme, Connecticut or Diarrhea, Nebraska.

My mom was about the only one who never came down with anything. She attributed her good fortune to a vitamin supplement called Airborne, which looks exactly like what would happen if scientists successfully got algae and an Alka Seltzer pill to fall in love. Airborne claims to help keep you from getting sick if you just drink a cup of green nasty froth every day.

As I watched Mom down a glass, I cringed and said, “I’d rather just be sick.” I got my wish. But my wife Kara also took Airborne every day, and she was one of the first among us to get zombified. So I still don’t know whether the stuff works or not. But I suspect it’s at least as effective as Dumbo’s magic feather.

You can try to catch Mike Todd with chopsticks online at mikectodd@gmail.com.