The Blow Job

Many of you who know me understand that I'm a little bit of a germ-o-phobe. Not in a terribly obsessive way, but enough that The Boy teases me about it quite a bit. I do appreciate bathroom doors that can be pushed with a covered shoulder rather than opened by a handle that's been abused by the non-hand-washers. And I like the dual functionality of mittens in the wintertime as both a warming device and anti-bacterial shield (at least in my mind they are).

So, as you might expect, riding the subway is a little bit of a gross-out sometimes. I don't like people touching me, especially my hand, and obviously, of course, my butt or boobs. But the worst, germ wise, has got to be the coughers and snot-slingers. You can just feel the germs alighting on your person after espaping the mucousy prison of their previous host. Yuck!

But today I met another germ offender. It was more subtle, but gave me a good dose of the germ-e-jeebies.

He was, oh, what to call it? He wasn't sniffing. It was an anti-sniff, really. Unsniffing. I guess technically, he was blowing. And this blow job didn't have a tissue.

I guess he wasn't trying to express a lot of . . . fluid. He just must have had a tinge and was trying to flush it out, if you will. Unfortunately for me, he was doing so in close proximity to me, within earshot as we were walking. With each step it was

Un-sniff. . . . Un-sniff . . . . Unsniff . . . . Unsniff

I couldn't get away! I was envisioning all the germs flying toward me with great abandon with every snortling step he took. Ack! Save me!

I tried to maneuver away, but just as I would think I had succeeded in evading him, I would hear it again in my hearing periphery - Unsnif . . . . Unsnif!

Finally I succeeded in putting some distance between us, then thankfully lost him in the crowd.

When I got to work, the first thing I did was wash my hands. Of the whole thing.