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Germ Warfare Gone Wrong

Normally it's a good thing to be wary of germs, and I applaud all instances of microbial warfare in all it's forms. Except when it happens to go wrong....oh so very wrong as it did the other day in the bathroom at our local YMCA.

I swim every morning. I mean I try to swim every morning. Ok, it's more of a water aerobics class than actual swimming, but it's still in the water and I'm flailing around, so lets call it swimming. After the swimming I'm pretty wet and tend to smell of chlorine, so I shower. Being the modest person that I am, I can't and won't walk around nekkid in the dressing room like some of the other gym patrons do. I've simply not got the .....whatever it is that passes for female cojones to do so. Not like my aerobics teacher who held a conversation with me while I was fully clothed and she was not. Who was, in point of fact, as naked as the day she was born. I was trying very hard to keep looking her in the eye and wishing I could be as unembarrassed as she was. Plus she was standing barefoot on the wet floor without benefit of flip flops, which gave me an attack of the icks. Who knows what germs live on that floor?

I told you that, to tell you this. There are two bathrooms in the main locker room that have doors. These doors close, thus ensuring privacy for using the facilities, or for dressing. I use them for both.

On this particular day I flailed, showered, then closed myself behind the safety of the bathroom door. Needing to use the facilities, I first did what any self-respecting woman with germaphobic tendencies does, I placed the thin white crinkly toilet paper seat cover on the toilet seat so my bare bottom would not touch anything previously touched by the nether regions of other human beings. You don't know where those other butts have been.

So, I sat. An act I regretted almost immediately. My skin was wet, and the substance the toilet seat covers are made out of are engineered to love wet, embrace wet, make wet it's own, become one with the wet. Usually they are put into the water of the toilet bowl after use and then it dissolves. Would you like to know what happens when it comes into contact with a slightly moist rear end? Super glue. Gooey, sticky, gelatinous gobs of tissue paper was stuck all over my gluteus maximus and down the backs of my legs. I reached around and tried to peel it off my tender bottom. No such luck. No peeling was possible because the stuff was glued to me! My fingers came back with specs of wet tissue attached to them. Again I reached around and tried to find an edge I could grab. Nope, no edges.

So I used my finger nails. It was like scratching skin with lotion on it, I left trails and scooped up the gooey gunk with my nails. I'd have to scratch every square inch of my derrière in order to remove this mess. Scratch, clean finger nails, scratch and clean again.

It took me a while but I finally managed to remove the majority of the offending goo and dress myself. It took me considerably longer to rid myself of the stuff under my fingernails. Scrubbing furiously, like an OCD sufferer on crack, the bacteria-laden goo ultimately released it's hold on me.

For a card-carrying germaphobe, such as myself, having the wet, gooey, germ-infested 'butt-gasket' attached to my tender epidermis caused me untold psychological damage. I'm hopeful that with copious amounts of chocolate therapy I'll stop screaming every time I enter a public restroom.

Comments

  1. women walk around completely naked in my gym locker room as well and i have to say i don't like it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. before anyone out there starts attacking me, i just want to say it's a level of familiarity i'm not ready for from complete strangers. okay, attack away.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Talented as you are as a spinner of word pictures, on this occasion the narrative would have been enhanced by a video.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You can certainly paint a picture which I was enjoying so much through the tears of laughter running down my face. Nothing I love more than a good belly laugh, so thanks Pamela.....funny lady.

    ReplyDelete
  5. You are so funny.

    As one registered germaphobe to another all I can say is AAARRGGHH!
    I would rather have needles poked in my eyes than have any exposed epidermal cells come into contact with either the 'nasty' terlet seat or the 'bacterial Disneyland' on that floor EEEEWWWW!

    Now you know how it feels to be a guy..because while we are conversing with members of the opposite sex, in our minds you are all nekked, and that's why it is so hard to maintain eye contact.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous4:34 PM

    I wish women would walk around nekkid in the shower room of my gym. The old geezers I have to look at should not be nekkid anywhere anyone can see them, and worse: they have no shame.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Well i do hope your phobia bottoms out.
    And I am hopeful you will not be the BUTT of anyones jokes.

    ASS this is a serious dilema you faced.

    Maybe next time dry off before placing that cute bottom of yours down again.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Anna, I don't blame you darlin'. I'm right there with ya.

    vicus, I would not subject my worst enemy to an actual visual of that event, so I assume you were simply wanting pictures of the nekkid women waltzing around the locker room. Sorry, no such luck.

    Angel, I'm glad I brought a smile to your face. Life is too short to forget to laugh at yourself.

    HE, thanks. It's nice to make the acquaintence of a fellow germophobe. And that whole 'not being able to look us in the eye' thing. I just always figured it was because your eyes were somehow adversly affected by gravity when in the presence of breasticles.

    Steve, you cracked me up big time. You're so punny.

    Wayne...I don't even want a visual of what's going on in your gym dressing room. Oh my goodness.

    ReplyDelete

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