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June 18, 2007
Ugh. Ick! It
used to freak me out as a teen when I accidentally touched a piece of
gum under the table at Bob’s Big Boy restaurant. Yuck! Nasty!
It’s been in someone’s mouth. Saliva, spit, germs…gross!!!!!!!!
Years later, my
daughter Jamie is a germ freak. I’m convinced this came as the result
of food inspections by the Department of Health at the Cinnabon
shop she worked at. Fastidious attention to cleanliness was essential
to keeping up health standards, and today she insists on bottles of
bleach under the kitchen sink and around the house.
It’s even hard
to have a family picnic these days. Double dipping chips…a la
Seinfeld…has become a crime punishable by excommunication.
Backwash, from sipping your soda through a straw? Execution!
Television
validates our squeamish fears of getting germs from others. Jordan
Cavanaugh, medical examiner, pries a wad of orange-flavored gum from
under the pay phone. Voila. DNA analysis, and trace amounts of
saliva nail down the culprit. Case solved!
CSI…crime scene
investigators, on their third inspection of the temple where four
praying monks were murdered, find gum on a Buddha statue. Analysis
reveals cooking spices in the chewed gum. Suspect is confronted.
Conviction! Bam. Case closed.
Hmmm…DNA on a
wad of chewing gum?
At all levels,
for the average person, sharing germs…on a wad of chewing gum, by
double dip, backwash, or any other fashion…is either gross or
criminally dangerous. But sharing germs of the intimate kind…from
sex…well that’s safe…if you ask some “sexperts”…and if not safe…then
it’s “safer.”
Safer than
what? Two bites of a Dorito double-dipped in salsa? Leaving
your chewing gum behind after you commit armed burglary?
Grocery stores
now offer Sanicarts as you enter the store, wet wipes to
sanitize the handle of the shopping cart used by some unknown
germ-carrying humanoid before you. Comedy routines have us laughing
at the common effort of many to get out of the bathroom without
touching the door handle, touched by so many other sickly people
before us.
But sex germs?
No problem. Sexperts who want to serve up condoms to teenagers chafe
at the suggestion that we should establish sexual abstinence until
marriage has the expected standard for youth.
Sex germs?
These “sexperts” don’t want to dwell on the negative. That would be
fear-based. That would be unrealistic…they preach…because kids are
going to have sex. They can’t help it. Young people cannot control
themselves…not now…not ever.
Sex…our
children…and sex germs? These “sexperts” reassure us. Sex germs?
They’re consensual germs. That makes it OK. A person, even if she’s
only fourteen, consented to having those germs placed inside, outside,
all over and anywhere…by a responsible, mature and caring person…who…
…who…what?
…also consented
to being infected by nasty, icky, yucky, gross…germs?
What am I
missing here? Germs are germs.
If chewing on
germy, pre-chewed chewing gum…if the thought of this is enough to make
us gag…
…then why would
any sane person jump into bed with the first consensual babe, and
every other consensual babe after that…only to end up sharing germs?
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