Their research is making me sick

By DAVID J. COEHRS

Now here's some good news:

Researchers recently tested the palms of 51 college students and discovered 4,742 species of bacteria living there. The average hand carried 150 species, and women's hands carried more than men's.

Just what I want to hear after fighting with my co-workers over a plate of cinnamon rolls. There were only so many rolls, and these people are not shy about staking their claims. There was a lot of pushing and grabbing, and someone actually punched the boss in the arm and called him a dink in order to get one of the larger ones. (I apologized later.) During the melee, lots of what the researchers would deem bacteria-infested fingers manhandled the food and squished the icing.

This is what happens when you work in a small office where colleagues throw their manners to the wolves. You get so comfortable around each other that you forget you're in a professional atmosphere. So you don't hesitate to openly adjust ill-fitting underwear or pick your teeth with a ballpoint pen or blow your nose in a loud, lusty way you should probably reserve for alone time, when that deep, liquidy snort won't make those around you shudder with disgust and wonder whether you were born in a barn.

It's funny how, when you work day after day with people, a lot of your pretenses eventually evaporate, and you act like you do at home in front of your spouse. Not that you walk around your job site in baggy sweatpants, scratching indiscriminately, with your undone hair looking like a freak show and a toaster pastry hanging from your unbrushed mouth like a snake eating a rat. But you tend to let your guard down, because they're just the people at work, and after months or years toiling side by side none of you expects much from one another.

I come to work every day, looking with minimal interest at the rest of the staff, idly noting what they wear and eat for lunch. Occasionally, someone will lose their temper, or do something surprising that jolts you out of your reverie. But mostly you silently acknowledge each other's presence, then jump into the daily fray, pausing at intervals long enough to notice the one who always looks ragged because he's out half the night with that harpy he's been dating, whom the receptionist knows from her volleyball league and guarantees has "been around." And the one with the severe manicure who the women in Customer Service say was making googy eyes at the swarthy overnight delivery guy way before the ink was dry on her divorce papers.

But I think we were talking about hands dripping with bacteria. Just looking at my own computer keyboard, I can vouch for the researchers' findings. It's older, and the keys have probably been punched by scores of people before me, and heaven knows how many species of the aforementioned bacteria were crawling all over their fingertips. I have made efforts to scrub it with powerful solvents that, by all rights, should have eaten away my fingerprints and, for that matter, half of my desk and the nearby wall paneling. But so much detritus has lodged between the keys over time, not to mention built up on their surfaces, that I believe the bacteria has mutated to withstand disinfectant cleaner, nuclear destruction and Jerry in Marketing, whose aftershave fumes have been proven to cause brain damage in laboratory monkeys.

Every day, I bang away at the keys, staring straight ahead at the computer monitor so I don't have to look down and notice I'm typing on the equivalent of a toxic waste dump. It's a real challenge for a germaphobe like me, who once was hospitalized for hysteria after watching a toddler lick a dirty Popsicle stick.

My beloved suggested I flip the keyboard upside down and shake it to get rid of foreign matter, but I'm frankly terrified of what kind of matter I'd set free. I'm already suspecting that things are living in there, because snacks I've set down in front of it have mysteriously disappeared. At first, I blamed that on a fellow staff member who shall remain nameless but whose desk is near mine. Every time I munch on some fat- and cholesterol-laden goodie my wife wouldn't approve of, his prurient, beady little eyes are right there, following every bite, crunch and swallow. I was going to accuse him of swiping from me until that day my nut bar was missing and I heard a satisfied belch from inside my keyboard.

I know, I know. Many of you are probably nauseated by this subject matter, wondering what kind of sicko would bring it up, and thinking to yourself that maybe you'll forego dinner tonight and just have a little ginger ale to settle your stomach. Well, now you know how I feel each and every work day, as I tappity-tap these keys with visions of the slimy, mutant bacteria on them entering through my pores and eagerly traveling my body's byways, where they take the exits to my liver and kidneys and intestines and splotch their germs with abandon, daring my white blood cells to attack them ...

Blecch! Save me some ginger ale.