Fear of contamination
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon in British Library pretending to write my essay on Consciousness. But this is what shocked me.
At some point I needed to use facilities and as I was preparing to do just that, I caught myself lining the toilet paper along the toilet seat in a neat fashion, presumably to save myself from Hepatitis A or some sort of vile infection like this.
This was no ordinary realisation...this was my first realisation that I am turning into my father.
My father, an extremely cool guy at one time (see photo), feared Hepatitis A all his life (to you and me this is best known as jaundice). I think that my brother and I were the only 2 year olds that knew what that is. He spent his life religiously washing hands in order to avoid getting infected.
This might seem reasonable to many but this is how it started.
His obsessive behaviour grew worse with every year and now he has quite a few observable ways of making you feel he is not all there.
In order to avoid such contamination, when we go shopping, he has a certain ritual, such as wiping the shopping trolley with anti bacterial wipe and then pressing the lift buttons with his elbow.
He is the only man I know that uses depilatory cream to remove unsanitary hair under his arm and is not ashamed to complain to the manufacturer when the cream does not live up to his expectation.
All of this amused me for the best part of my childhood but now, faced with my own fragile mental state, I am beginning to fear my own descent into murky ways of contamination. Every time I see someone spit, I fear TB and I avoid handling raw meat in order to escape catching E-coli.
Now I am lining the pristine toilet seat with toilet paper in fear of catching thrush or, worse, syphilis perhaps.
I, naturally, want to fight this but don't know how. I feel this condition will degenerate to the point where I will resemble my father in every way.
Already I am unexplainably drawn to antibacterial products or those that possess anti-viral properties. Is this a sign?
Or more importantly...is there a cure for this?
At some point I needed to use facilities and as I was preparing to do just that, I caught myself lining the toilet paper along the toilet seat in a neat fashion, presumably to save myself from Hepatitis A or some sort of vile infection like this.
This was no ordinary realisation...this was my first realisation that I am turning into my father.
My father, an extremely cool guy at one time (see photo), feared Hepatitis A all his life (to you and me this is best known as jaundice). I think that my brother and I were the only 2 year olds that knew what that is. He spent his life religiously washing hands in order to avoid getting infected.
This might seem reasonable to many but this is how it started.
His obsessive behaviour grew worse with every year and now he has quite a few observable ways of making you feel he is not all there.
In order to avoid such contamination, when we go shopping, he has a certain ritual, such as wiping the shopping trolley with anti bacterial wipe and then pressing the lift buttons with his elbow.
He is the only man I know that uses depilatory cream to remove unsanitary hair under his arm and is not ashamed to complain to the manufacturer when the cream does not live up to his expectation.
All of this amused me for the best part of my childhood but now, faced with my own fragile mental state, I am beginning to fear my own descent into murky ways of contamination. Every time I see someone spit, I fear TB and I avoid handling raw meat in order to escape catching E-coli.
Now I am lining the pristine toilet seat with toilet paper in fear of catching thrush or, worse, syphilis perhaps.
I, naturally, want to fight this but don't know how. I feel this condition will degenerate to the point where I will resemble my father in every way.
Already I am unexplainably drawn to antibacterial products or those that possess anti-viral properties. Is this a sign?
Or more importantly...is there a cure for this?
posted by Martina Dove at 12:25 pm
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