Pass the Purell Please!

Alright, I know I haven't posted anything in two months. I just needed some inspiration to break the dry spell and push me back to the keyboard. A couple weeks ago I found it....

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Going to work on a cold winter morning is usually something that I don't look forward to doing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I speak for most people when I say that I'd rather grind my skin off with a cheese grater and roll around in iodine than stand at an outbound T stop in subzero temperatures. Okay, fine. I exaggerate. A cheese grater was a little gratuitous. A potato peeler would've been more appropriate.

So I get on the T, shivering cold and about to pass out from lack of sleep. I made my way to the back of the T (which, I might add is the proper thing to do when going inbound from an outbound stop so as not to congest the front of the train - but that's a different post altogether). Luckily there were plenty of seats in the back: a ray of sunshine in my otherwise cloudy day.

At the next stop, an interesting young man got on the train and also made his way to the back. He also sat down but in the seat across from mine. Normally a person like this wouldn't have attracted my attention as such, but this situation was unique. By unique, I mean weird. This fifteen-year-old, acne-faced Adonis was behaving quite strangely.

His foot tapped rapidly. Hands twitched. Eyes darted. B.O emanated. This kid had a one way ticket to crazytown and I was along for the ride. Nobody else seemed to notice or care about his strange behavior except for me. I felt like I was in that episode of the Twilight Zone where the man claimed he saw a monster on the wing of the plane, but no one else did. But this was no Twilight Zone; this was life on the green line.

At one point I even feared for my life. The kid was dressed in all black and looked akin to a captain of the trenchcoat mafia and Hitler youth all rolled into one delightful package. By the time the train got to Blandford Street, he reached into his jacket like he was going to draw a gun! My heart raced. Was this it? Was I going to be killed on the T? Was the T going to collect the ultimate toll?

Nope. He didn't pull a gun that day. Instead he jerked forward and vomited all over the floor of the train. Yes, he projectiled right in front of my feet. None of his breakfast got on my shoes but it came pretty close. Everyone cleared the area, save for one kindly woman who offered him a travel pack of Kleenex.

I got off at the next stop. As I walked off the train - and away from the overwhelming stench of vomit - a sickening thought went through my head. His hands had been soaked in puke as he attempted to block its exit from his mouth. I was sure that at some point down the line, he would exit the train and most likely grab several of the T's handle bars as he did.

Probably hundreds of people touched those handle bars throughout that day. And no one knew what they were touching. Granted, my story is an extreme example of how germs could be spread on the T. Unfortunately, though, the T is a cesspool for the spread of germs. Whether it be from sneezing, coughing, bodily fluids, vomit, or just breathing, all kinds of germs are jumping around those trains like a flea at a puppy parade.

Lets get one thing straight: I do not have obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm not that guy that carries a bottle of Lysol around and sprays every doorknob. I don't wash my hands every 10 seconds. But I do have common sense and I don't think it takes a genius to realize how disgustingly germ-infested those trains are.

Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director of Infection Control at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center found these startling results: "Swabs taken from handles and child seats in 36 grocery carts in San Francisco, Chicago, Tucson and Tampa, Fla., found they ranked third worst in both overall cleanliness and bodily-fluid contamination. The only things found to be ickier were playground equipment and the armrests on public transportation."

In another study published by the University of Arizona, "In addition, just over one in two say they always wash their hands or do so most of the time after coming in from being outside (55%), or after sneezing or coughing (51%). But when it comes to cleaning hands after using public transportation or shaking someone’s hand, only one in three (33%) and one in five (17%) respectively say they always wash their hands or do so most of the time."

These statistics make my stomach churn.

I never really washed my hands after using public transportation either. I didn't really think about it. That is, until Puke-ahontas changed everything.