spoon

The other day, I realized a lot through a spoon. I was sitting in a diner - the coffee and pie kind - and I started just staring at my spoon. At first, the germaphobe in me kicked in, "Man, think of all the different people with different diseases that have used this spoon -- people with Herpes, HIV, Hepatitis, and so forth." It got me thinking about the amount of traffic on one spoon in a fairly busy diner. I was almost in awe of how many mouths the spoon had been in.

Then I started getting kinda creeped out, but alas, I kept thinking. A wide array of people have probably used this spoon - teachers, doctors, lawyers, construction workers, truck drivers, an occasional homeless guy with a buck for a coffee, and so on. Maybe some 11-year-old whiz kid came in here with his dad after the science fair after winning first prize. Maybe a Toronto Blue Jay came in here once. Maybe some babelicious actress I ogle in People magazine came in here once late at night after the film festival.

Then I started thinking -- I wonder if someone has used this spoon who is now dead? Well of course, given the odds. Then I started thinking, I wonder if someone that has used this spoon has ever killed someone? Well, given the probability of it, probably a murderer has used the same spoon. Maybe a guy who lives around here killed someone, and frequented the diner. I mean, killers gotta drink coffee, right?

But I wonder if someone who used this spoon ever saved someone's life? Maybe they were in a carjacking and attacked the carjacker, bearing the brunt of a bullet for the others. Or what about something wild like if the murderer, and the murderee, both used the same spoon, at different times of the year? Or what if the babelicious actress used the same spoon an hour after that homeless guy did? Do you think the actress would still use the spoon if the homeless guy used it, washed it in the sink, and then handed it to her?

Or what if that 11-year-old whiz kids cures HIV some day?

These are all the things I thought about staring into a spoon the other day, at a diner, late at night, stirring my coffee.

SARS

So SARS has come and gone, and in its wake, we're left with......mountains of hand sanitizer. Every public place I go now, I see bottles of hand sanitizer. But I don't think anyone's hands are getting any more sanitized.

Ever watch someone use hand sanitizer? They pump a little out, mix it on their palms half-heartedly, and move on. I'm officially sanitized, they think. Therein lies the problem. EVERYONE will now use that same bottle. In fact, people will share even MORE germs by sharing the damn hand sanitizer bottle as they are sanitizing their hands. It's sanitizing insanity. You take the bottle, (touching it), rinse, (touch it) and put it back (touching it s'more). The next sanitizee comes up and does the same. People are actually spreading MORE germs than before! No one even does a good job of cleaning their hands: they just get a few knuckles, maybe a thumb, at best. I mean, how am I to believe that a few wipes of some nice-smelling lotion is gonna sanitize my hands?

Ever watched ER? Ever seen a Doctor soap up? Thirty scrubs on each finger, methodically. It takes them 20 minutes to wash their hands with stuff that probably smells worse than Napalm. They even take a course on how to clean their hands in med school. And we, the laymen germaphobes of the world, think we can do the same with a five second wipe from a bottle of hand sanitizer we bought at Shoppers DrugMart.