A Treatise on Hygiene (Reporting from the Boulder Library)

Part II (from Lulling Philosophical Nonsense)

My laptop has been in a deep, slumbered sleep and unplugged for the past four days; I remain dependent on an electrical source and am not allowed the full liberation of movement only a freedom of choice -to place the computer on my lap or the table. The layout of the upstairs library “tree fort” provides a number of options: squeeze in between two people located at the tables mushed together in the center or take up a seat at the smaller tables spaced intermittently on the perimeter of the room. Given the recent outbreak of Swine Flu and that the kumbaya conglomeration of tables in the middle of the room would put me within arms reach of ten people all possibly harboring the disease, I opt for the outskirts. In defense of my paranoia, I will provide a metaphor: eating the fish lowest on the food chain has the least chance of Mercury poisoning. Why? 

Biological magnification. At each level of the food chain there is a tremendous amount of energy loss and thus, a predator must eat a large amount of prey in order to meet its daily energy quota. Because fat soluble substances cannot be diluted, broken down, or excreted in urine they accumulate in the fatty tissue of an organism and this fat accumulates in the gut of the predator. Mercury is efficiently absorbed but slowly excreted by organisms and is thus stored in the adipose tissue. Algae absorb Mercury, Zooplankton eat the algae, larger fish eat the Zooplankton; by the time salmon are ready to feast, its prey has already accumulated 10^ of the its place on the food chain. It explains why herring contain mercury at approximately 0.01 ppm and shark contain mercury at greater than 1 ppm (EPA 1997).

A person sits down at a table full of early risers (all more likely to have Swine Flu for their lack of sleep). After much deliberation, these people decide to take a study break and five other people sit down. By the time this person decides to have lunch he has now made contact with at least ten other people and if one of them is infected, he will then transfer it to everyone else who sits down.

And then there is always the tumult and distraction of crowded tables

My healthy choice thumbs me to a new page of adventure: sit next to a male student at the left table, sit next to a female at the middle table, or sit next to the homeless man to the right table. Each have their costs and benefits but carefully weighing each, I find the middle table just right.

She looks up, smiles, and returns to her screen. The ruminations of whether I have agitated her by occupying the additional space and empty seat are quelled when she grabs the folds under her chair and politely jiggles it to the right. It is a gesture that scientifically leaves the chair in exactly the same location but warmly suggests that there is adequate room for both of us. My failed foresight manifests itself when I realize that this table provides no electrical outlet and I am forced to grovel to my number two and ask him if I can plug into the socket under his table. His charming acquiescence conceals any grudge he might be holding against me and I am impressed by his resiliency.

I sense my table mate’s amiable disturbance by the wiggling of her screen that might be loosely connected to my typing but is more attributable to the lousily constructed tables; it is reassuring to know that the man at the table adjacent to mine holds no obvious hostility. Tangentially, through my recently honed skill of telekinesis, I am aware of something that disturbs her even more than the subtle wobbles of her screen.

It is that she so amicably receives my invitation to plop down next to her, putting the two-person table at its maximum seating capacity, and I have transported –like the burrs of a burdock flower that stick to one’s clothing –the putrid smell attached to me, into our communal space; she has no problem distinguishing the this fetor emanates from my half of the table. I can tell that this smell only adds to the bleak realism of the rainy still life framed by the flimsy, new-age, polished aluminum that she looks at every time she takes a break from the oppression of the harsh light and tiny characters that pervade her screen. On a relevant side note, the smell from my socks conveniently overpowers the smell extending from the crotch region of my green corduroy pants (I still have control of my bowels but this smell is a naturally occurring process to all pants which haven't been washed for prolonged periods of time).

The socks are not mine but my friend’s. I have been using them for two and a half days and I would’ve used the socks reluctantly given to me the day before by her boyfriend, but it was snowing when we went to watch the elk bugle in Estes National Park and I had gotten them wet trying to rile these massive creatures (P.S. Don’t rile them, how would you like to be challenged when you are with your harem). I bit the bullet –or more appropriately, plugged the bullet up my nose –and with reluctant compliance slipped into these socks that poorly aromatized with age.

The ebb and flow of her computer screen continues and I kindly take my Mac from the table and put it on my lap (another friend of mine once forwarded me a New York Times article confirming an argument I didn’t believe of her’s –that using a computer in one’s lap would decrease one’s sperm count; this further ennobles my action). My neighbor makes no acknowledgment of my expiatory sacrifice.

Her ingratitude combined with my swelling concern for the hazardous effects of my magnanimous effort leave me with the obvious option of quickest relief; I put my computer back on the table where I seek a novel gratification in the back and forth synchronicity of the wobbling of her screen with the rhythmic typing of my fingers. It isn’t my fault that the designers of her flimsy computer didn’t forebode the downward pressures of finger pecking onto an equally flimsy table (Steve Jobs paid me to say that).

Amidst the wheezing, I realize that if she is a recovering or current hypochondriac (depending on the ratifications of the new DSM manual, I might be one myself), it is my frequent sniffling, intermittent cough, and occasional hacking fit finaleed (spelling?...Even a word?) by the hock of a loogie that bothers her most and displaces the scent of my crotch and my causal causation of the wiggling of her screen to second and third, respectively: sticks and stones may break your bones but smells will never hurt you. 

But Swine Flu can hurt you and if she erroneously assumes that I have this pig born illness, she is probably harboring a good deal of unnecessary anxiety.

Her anxiety dwindles upon our moment of reconciliated rapport when I receive a tweet in the lower left corner of my browser and it makes an absurd noise (I don’t know how to disable this) –the noise resembles something between a high-pitched squeak and an uncoordinated, sick person attempting to gargle salt water.

She laughs but it is not for the right reason: it is a release of tension and not because she finds it genuinely funny –like the mismatch when a person’s cell phone rings in a library and the internal part of you wants to hit them but instead, you give an external chuckle (you settle for leaving a hate note when they get up to go to the bathroom...the pen is mightier). Wanting to avert any resentment, I plea technological ineptitude and explain that I somehow regretfully accepted these tweets but don’t know how to put an end to it. Her smile changes to a genuine look of disinterest and the eyes that roll inside her laugh alert me that she just wants to return to her work.

She puts a wrapper to her mouth. Slides her gum to the tips of her lips and spits it out. I am disgusted –has all sense of decent hygiene been mouth washed away?