Germs

Jacobs sure spends a lot of time worrying about germs. He loves getting out of shaking hands, and discovers that "Levitius says that a man shall be unclean for the day after his 'emission of seed' which gives him a handy excuse not to shake hands with men since he cannot know who may be unclean. He finds that many men are willing to share this information with him when he explains why. And learns that "men of [his] vintage aren't having a whole lot of sex." This does not surprise me having read 365 Nights.

I have met a few people who I think qualify as germophobes. The most egregious was a woman selling apple cider at a farmer's market. My husband and I had our own mugs and asked if we could fill them. She insisted that we first fill on of the paper cups and empty it into the mug. Since the farmer's market was part of a sustainability conference this seemed especially odd to us. When we asked why she told us that we might have put our mouths on our mugs already, and then the cider might splash into the mug and then splash back up onto the spigot of the cider.