High School Daze.

I know I've struggled with being a germaphobe for at least the last 20 years, but I'm not quite sure when my OCD took a sharp left and really, really became hardcore.

Like, when did it really became life-alteringly bad? You know, I remember back in high school, I was a pretty damn hardcore germaphobe. I remember being a fierce handwasher, and I remember just as fiercely refusing, to the detriment of my all-important school popularity, to share my hairbrush. But then again, I also remember using the water fountain *shudder*, something I'd never in a million years do nowadays.

Is that the jankiest photo editing you ever done seen? lul.

I do remember noticing and being utterly horrified concerned about the actions of others. I remember telling you guys about how my friend Joy would say she didn't need to wash her hands after using the school bathroom because, inexplicably, "she had already showered that morning." As if showers "stuck."

O_O

I just--I mean--I can't--I--I--

Anyway. That kind of thing drove me nuts. It grossed me out beyond belief. I remember being disgusted when I'd see fellow students walk out after not using that gritty, sandy pink powder soap (remember that shit??)--

--to scrub up after using the bathroom. But my gross-out didn't practically disable me. Whereas nowadays, if I was hanging out with someone who didn't wash, I would either need a full-on Hazmat suit in order to continue our day date/play date, or I would have to bid them adieu for the day and go home and take a rape-shower.

Back then, I would just think, "You are a sick, gross individual, and I will not share your Funyuns at lunch time. Carrying on." And I would. I would carry on. Without dwelling. WITHOUT DWELLING.

And back then, in high school, I had approx. 790 homework assignments per night. It didn't help that I was in Advanced Everything. Advanced Placement English. Honors History. Honors Science. Calculus in 9th grade. Gym Class for Superstars. Just kidding about that last one, I was a fat lazy fuck.

I took home about seven enormous, giant, three-pounds-each textbooks per night, plus my hugely overstuffed binder, plus all manner of extraneous shits. I was also playing it cool by carrying my backpack on one shoulder as opposed to wearing the backpack properly on two shoulders. And FORGET the strap that went around your middle inn order to evenly distribute the weight so that you would not end up a hunchback. First, my middle was far too large in those days for such shenanigans. Second, I mean, come on, fucking DORKY. I mean, shut up.

I have a point somewhere, bear with me.

So...cutting to the chase, I took home with me book after book of homework, and never once did it occur to me to disinfect or Lysol or Clorox off the covers of textbooks that I was using. (1) Because my BFFs Lysol and Clorox wipes hadn't been invented yet, dammit; and (2) because it just didn't goddamn occur to me. Because while I was germ obsessed, I wasn't That OCD yet. This was both good and bad. Bad because I surely brought home myriad horrific high school germs with me and unwittingly shoved them up my nose and got sick, but Good because I wasn't a raging paranoiac yet.

I blog about this now because, the point is, now I AM a raging paranoiac. What am I to do when Maya or Naomi is in school and, every single day of her life, brings home 6 or 8 textbooks plus a PeeChee or Trapper Keeper or two? 

Shall I Clorox off those bitches before I allow her to run some mathematical proofs? Shall I spritz them with Lysol before I allow her to calculate the circumference of whatever the fuck? I just don't know.

I am glad on one hand that my OCD wasn't quite this bad during my high school days, but now it IS this bad. So what am I supposed to do when my kids are in junior high or high school? It's bad enough now that one of my children is in PRE-fucking-SCHOOL. But I can deal with wiping down a lunch box and quarantining a backpack like it's got the bubonic plague. But when it comes to math textbooks and history textbooks, shit, son, am I really going to say, "Hi honey, welcome home, I made you some snickerdoodles, now let's use some medical-grade CaviWipes on your English lit book before we get started on your homework?"

It's s hard. I do, but I don't, want to pass on The Crazy. I do, and I don't. I don't, and I do.

Addendum.

So as promised...

The comments to offbeatmama's post contain some absolute gems themselves. Some made me laugh, some made me cry, some made me dry-heave, some made me have conniptions. Without further ado:

"As for the baby wipes, we use Earth First natural wipes. They're thicker – so I don't feel like I'm wiping poop onto my hands every time she messes her diaper."

Oh really? They feel thick, so that you feel like you aren't getting fecal matter on your hands, so you feel like you are exempt from washing after changing a poopy diaper. Nice.

Another:

"My mother still remarks on the difference between my cousin and I healthwise when we were growing up. My mother had too much life going on to much more than once a week laundry day and give the house what she referred to as 'a lick and a promise' Not an actual lick you understand, though the photos of me as a baby licking the floor might dispute that. I was a remarkably healthy child, I was off school sick once in eleven years ( several times with concussion having fallen out of trees etc) 

"My aunt on the other hand sterilised everything she could and cleaned, polished, vacumed every surface every day. Outdoor clothes and shoes had to be removed in the hall and exchanged before entering the rest of the house and hands had to be washed every hour on the hour (yes really) as well as after going to the lavatory etc. 

"I've never known a house smell more of cleaning products and air fresheners. My cousin had incessant colds, coughs, chest infections, ear infections and to this day having left home some 10 years previously still has almost no immunity to germs. Of course she could just be predisposed to be particuarly prone but my mother maintains it's because she was never allowed to build up an immunity."

Doesn't this...doesn't this go against the Hygiene Hypothesis* itself? I mean, don't people love to spout off how "good" it is when kids get sick, that getting sick now means fewer illnesses later? So really, this person's cousin was doing her body good by the "incessant colds, coughs, chest infections, and ear infections"? But wait? Why didn't they build up her immune system? Oh yeah because the HH is p. much bunk. We covered that already.

* Edited to clarify: The HH as wildly misinterpreted by so many. lol.

Continuing:

"True Story: A professor of medicine at Oxford University, where I used to work back then, once told us that when his son & dil came by with their young infant, he was very worried by their sterile approach to child-hygiene. Whenever they would leave the room and he was alone with his grandchild, he would quickly get the pacifier, rub it on the carpet, and stuff it back in the infant's mouth. With his knowledge of immunology he knew that a child NEEDS to 'eat dirt' to build up a good immune system."

WHAT the FUCK? I don't even have words for this. A young infant needs to ingest germs that are on the carpet of a house like I need a hole in my head. Babies re BOMBARDED by germs and infectious agents from the second they enter this world, germs that cannot be avoided, many that you don't need to avoid, but plenty that you should try to. Nobody needs to fucking LICK THE CARPET (especially a tiny infant), which this amounts to. Unreal. If I found out my relative had done this, I would KILL THEM IN THE FACE.

"I remember my parents telling the story of my oldest younger brother (try saying that three times fast!) eating a roach when he was a baby. Our mother was like, "meh." Our dad? Complete freak out. He was convinced that Michael was going to get dysentery from it. Of course he was fine and ended up with the strongest immune system of the four of us.

Hear hear! Roaches for one and all! Clearly it was the roach that gave him the immune system of steel. There can be no other explanation.

Let's continue:

"LOL! So true!!! A little dirt never hurt anyone!"

LOL! Except when there's listeria in it and the mother ingests it through one of several ways and it kills babies in utero! LOL! Or when there's tainted manure in it and it gets on our cantaloupes and causes E. Coli outbreaks and kills thousands! LOL! But a little dirt never hurt anyone! LOL!

"We are a pretty natural family. My daughter has had bad ear infections in the past, and thanks to countless antibitotics she doesnt respond to treatment like she once did. Letting it run its course as long as she is not deathly ill has become the better option."

Letting...letting ear infections "run their course"?? Up until the moment the kid is"deathly ill"? Am I reading her correctly? Is she fucking insane? Yeah, because ear infections "just go away." And I'm sure the kid wouldn't mind being in excruciating pain and having a ruptured ear drum or two. Screw antibiotics. Let's let infections just do their thang. We're natural like that.

I can't even go on. Some people. The stupid burns.