Sick again…

Over the weekend I was sick, again, and yesterday and the day before that I was also sick, again. Now, I originally thought that the weekend throwing-up type of sickness possibly had something to do with the eating of bad scallops at the Chinese restaurant in the San Jose Fairmont ("Stay away from the seafood," a voice in my head warned me as I perused the menu, but of course I ignored the voice, thinking, "this is fancy, low-lighted, heavy linen napkin Chinese at the Fairmont, for god's sake. What could go wrong?"&#41 Two days after that episode, I woke up with another stomach ache– not a nauseous type of stomach ache, more like a stomach pain, a feeling which I am unfamiliar with; my stomach usually skips right to nauseous at the drop of a hat. I actually went home early on Monday and called in sick on Tuesday, something that is unheard of, I repeat, unheard of for me, as I always either feel guilty for not being at work or paranoid that my bosses will come to the realization that they didn't really need me after all, and decide to let me go.

I have had more stomach bugs over the last year than I have my whole life, all of which I have blamed on mild food poisoning. Why do I automatically assume food poisoning, you ask? Because this city is filthy, and I have seen more than a few examples of filthy behavior that make my stomach turn, literally. Why, the very basic kindergarten-level wash-your-hands-after- you-use-the-restroom rule is being broken day in and day out all over the place. My office, for example, shares the bathroom with two other offices on the same floor. I've seen and heard countless women come in, go to the bathroom, and leave without so much as turning on the water to even make me think they're washing their hands. And then there are the people who think that the idea of washing their hands means turning the cold water on for two seconds while just barely getting their hands wet. Whatever happened to using soap?

But I've already voiced my disgust with the wash-aphobic in a previous entry. Today, though, I saw something that was truly gross. I took the (packed, as usual&#41 train to work, and ended up standing next to a weird, sickly-looking woman who was holding on to the pole with both hands. As time passed, her holding turned into full-body leaning, greasy hair and all, and right before she got out at her stop, she proceeded to repeatedly rub her nose back and forth across the pole…the pole that we all have to hold onto when we get on the train and have to stand. It's bad enough that six million dirty hands a day probably hold on to the same pole that you have to, but when someone wipes their nose directly on it, that's just too much for me. The fact that our society would mock obsessively-clean people like Howard Stern and Jerry Seinfeld remains a mystery to me. I mean, if a disgruntled office worker can't even wash her hands after she uses the bathroom, what about all the disgruntled food service workers who serve you your lunch? I stand firmly behind my food poisoning theory.