But the community I live in seems to be utterly terrified, not only of casual illnesses but of any kind of concession to the idea that we all might be ephemeral mortal flesh.
So there are legitimate and sensible reasons to protect your, of course - especially in a country where you pay for your own healthcare. And so, to begin with, I found it merely amusing that there were sanitising wipes at the supermarket for you to wipe the handle of your trolley before you, ugh, have to touch it. Or sanitiser dispensers in the walls of the hallways at school, so you don't have worry about, ugh, infecting the poor children. But when someone didn't shake my hand on the grounds of hygiene, I stopped being amused.
Children here do not get 'sore throats', they get 'strep throat' because, you know, this is an infection caused by something invisible that can be cleaned, for goodness sake. And the kids get antibiotics of course and flu shots - well, actually, everybody gets flu shots because catching it would simply be intolerable, wouldn't it.
Okay, still not completely beyond the pail, but it gets weirder. The word 'kiss' is a banned word at my kids' elementary school, let alone the action itself. Because kissing is disgusting, you see, because it spreads germs. Presumably the word 'fuck' is taboo for similar reasons. One parent told me, horrified and apologetic, how her child and mine shared food from their lunch boxes at school one day. I thought she must be worried about life-threatening allergies and was prepared to be sympathetic. But then she explained just how disgusting and unhealthy it was. Funny that her children get sick so much more often than mine...
I have this pet theory that we're healthier because my house is dirtier than theirs. There's no evidence for it, but I like to think that living in a dust-ridden cesspit inures us to bacteria and grime and gives our immune systems a rigorous regimen. That's my excuse anyway.
So I find this either amusing or disturbing depending on day of the week, but just this afternoon the dentist was telling us about a new product. They're called Spiffies and they are antibacterial wipes for babies' mouths. Here's a choice quote:
What is it about wiping and babies? We wipe their bottoms (a lot!) and their hands and dirty faces. Of course if you watch a baby, you’ll notice everything goes into their mouth including yucky bacteria...
Hooray, something else to clean! I'm sure this offers some help with regard to protecting milk teeth from possible cavities but I was happy when it was just the outside of the babies we were supposed to keep clean. It's as if we're hell bent on breeding out any resistance to infection whatsoever. Anyway, the reason the dentist got onto the subject of Spiffies, is that the key (I think he used the word 'miracle') ingredient is Xylitol, the stuff they put into sugar-free gum. He has a gynaecologist friend who as started prescribing Xylitol to his mothers-of-newborns. You know, because they can't help but, ugh, kiss their babies and their mouths are, ugh, full of germs.
This blew me away. Is it really germs or bacteria that is the concern? Or is it the dreadful inevitability or our own mortality that they are worried about being passed on to the beautiful brand new baby? I can't say for sure but I have my theory.
Whilst we're on the subject of Americans and hygiene and disgust I have to share this article from the New York Times last month.
In a nutshell, it discusses how political views and disgust are related. The killer quote:
Consider recent experiments by the psychologist Simone Schnall and her colleagues: people who were sitting in a foul-smelling room or at a desk cluttered with dirty food containers judged acts like lying on a résumé or keeping a wallet found on the street as more immoral than individuals who were asked to make the same judgments in a clean environment. This general finding has been replicated by other psychologists using a variety of disgust elicitors and moral behaviors.
Subtle cues about disgust and cleanliness can affect social and political judgments as well. In an experiment conducted recently by Erik Helzer, a Cornell Ph.D. student, and one of us (David Pizarro), merely standing near a hand-sanitizing dispenser led people to report more conservative political beliefs. Participants who were randomly positioned in front of a hand sanitizer gave more conservative responses to a survey about their moral, social and fiscal attitudes than those individuals assigned to complete the questionnaire at the other end of the hallway.
In another experiment one of us (Dr. Pizarro) was involved in, a foul ambient smell — emitted, unbeknownst to test subjects, by a novelty spray — caused people answering a questionnaire to report more negative attitudes toward gay men than did people who responded in the absence of the stench. Apparently, the slightest signal that germs might be present is enough to shift political attitudes toward the right.
Absolutely fascinating. Especially living in a conservative state where there are (as discussed) hand sanitizers everywhere! There's no real way to tell how precisely these concepts are inter-related but there is, apparently, a connection. Beneath all this behaviour and these attitudes, whether against people who are different, or in favour of our own precious bodily fluids, there is an unshakeable fear, an anxiety that cannot be assuaged.
In fact, I find it kind of scary. I hope it's not contagious.
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