According to Hofmann: Cleanliness next to common-senselessness
Now that we’re in the age of COVID — the terrible twos, as a matter of fact — we as a society have never been cleaner … or at least aimed higher to be cleaner.
You’d think the germs would just give up and die with the almost maniacal use of sanitizer, sanitizing bleach wipes, disinfectants, UV light, rubbing alcohol, antibacterial soap and bellowing threats from a Marine Corps drill instructor.
I think it will get to the point where Pigpen from the “Peanuts” cartoon strip will either be canceled or hosed down and deloused by the Centers for Disease Control, and his hippy parents taken into custody for endangering the welfare of a child.
While I hate to give anyone any more ideas about safety measures to follow, something that I’d noticed even before COVID-19 was the idiotic way we wash our hands after going to the bathroom.
The whole idea is really pointless when you think about it or, in my case, when you overthink about it.
LetĢƵ go through this process, shall we?
You walk into the restroom by pushing open a door and then you have to push open a secondary door if you need to go into a toilet. (I want to be as universal as possible, so we’re going to avoid the urinals and concentrate on the commodes.)
Oh, I’m also just making this about public restrooms because when you’re on your home turf, anything goes, right? Um…right?
Anyway, after you’ve finished your business, you might have something “dirty” on you that needs to be addressed.
Even if you are pristine in cleaning up, you still have the possibility that someone else put their “dirty” on the stall wall informing you to call a phone number for a good time; if that phone number happens to be yours, then you have problems that this column cannot fix.
Okay, so thereĢƵ “dirty” on you. You still have to open the stall door to get to the sink to wash your hands, and thatĢƵ done by using your hands to unlock and push open a stall door, turn a knob at the sink, press a liquid-soap dispenser and wash while singing “Happy Birthday” twice because, if you’re going to embarrass yourself, you might as well do it in a public restroom.
Now that your hands are washed and rinsed, you have to turn off the faucet — the same faucet you turned on with your “dirty” hands.
Your now “re-dirtied” hands before you defile the paper-towel dispenser, the hand dryer and the door handle when you exit the restroom.
So, basically, washing your hands was a complete waste of time.
I know what you’re saying now: “But, Mark, public restrooms have motion-sensors for the sink, the soap and the paper towels and hand dryers, you stupid idiot.”
That is true, but you’re forgetting two things.
First, not every place has those automatic features. While the hand dryer may be activated by motion or by screaming “Obey me and work!,” the sink and the soap dispenser may need to be manually and physically touched to function. So, basically, you’re drying your own “dirty” on your skin in that scenario.
The other thing to remember, even in the paradise known as the touchless restroom like you’re on “The Jetsons,” thereĢƵ always going to be someone who doesn’t clean the “dirty” from them and can most likely find a way to get it on something you will eventually touch.
If you’re wondering if thereĢƵ any hope, I’m telling you there isn’t, but thatĢƵ just my general outlook on life. When it comes to the “dirty” public restroom scenario, I have a solution.
LetĢƵ go back to the scenario that was laid out earlier. You exit the stall and approach the sink. Before you do anything, dispense a lot of soap and get a good lather going and use it to cake every surface that you will use — make it look like the top of the building at the end of “Ghostbusters” when the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man exploded.
Then you have to rinse the soap, which is an easy task if thereĢƵ a paper-towel dispenser; if there aren’t any paper towels, you could use toilet paper, but you would require extra soap lathering. If you avoid using paper products at all, turn on the sink, cup your hands under to fill them with water. You then have to walk around and throw water at the soap like you’re trying to put out a fire.
Two hours after that, you can wash your hands with pride, knowing you achieved the status of cleaner than clean.
Or you can go the other route and avoid touching anything in the restroom before and after you do your business.
I really can’t go into the gory details, but trust me when I tell you that any gender can do it. I used to clean gas-station restrooms; I’ve seen things … maybe everything.
Either way, you will free yourself of anything “dirty”… except for your mind, which is what you get for calling those phone numbers on bathroom stalls.
According to Hofmann is written by staff reporter Mark Hofmann of Rostraver Township. His books, “Good Mourning! A Guide to Biting the Big One … and Dying, Too” and “Stupid Brain,” are available on Amazon.com.