Friday, November 18, 2005

Bum Shakes

I know this might sound insensitive, but I just hate it when some bum bums a dollar or a cig off me and then offers me his hand as a misguided sign of gratitude. The problem that I have with this is that when I look at such a hand, more often than not, it looks like it hasn't been washed in about a year. I don't think that it's too paranoid or pathologically germophobic of me to think of all the fecal matter,coughed up tuberculosis (TB) bacteria and other unmentionables which might call such a hand "home".

I suppose that I could always choose to refuse such a bio-warfare hand shake, but I just don't have the heart to do that and so, I grind my teeth and shake.

This happened to me earlier today as I was finishing up my smoke outside of work. The guy actually wanted 2 smokes. Afterwards, I found the nearest bathroom sink and thoroughly scrubbed with anti-bacterial soap 3 times.

Giving cigarettes to bums presents a related issue. When friends, co-workers or even non-transient looking strangers ask to borrow a cig, I am perfectly fine with holding out my pack and letting them pick one. With bums, I prefer to get the cig out of the pack myself and then hand it to them, without letting them touch any of the remaining cigs that later end up in my mouth. Unfortunately, like today, I don't always remember to do that and end up with a throwaway pack. I should have just let the bum have the whole pack after he reached into it, but I didn't think to do it at that moment and so, the pack later ended up in a garbage can. There were about 12 cigs left in there. $3 down the drain...