Spend time with me and sooner or later you’ll realize I’m something of a germaphobe.

I didn’t begin life this way. I mean, as a baby, I probably picked up all the usual stuff to test its tensile strength with my gums. Today, I’m fine with my own grubbiness, especially on days I work from home, where I sit festering at a computer, so maybe I’m a hypocrite.

It’s other people’s germs I don’t want anything to do with. Like most humans, I have had to venture into public, and when you go into public, it means eventually having to use public restrooms. Not to drop a lot of scientific jargon on you, but men’s bathrooms are, generally speaking, super-duper icky.

If you’ve never entered a men’s room but suspect they might be a little unhygienic because fecal matter, urine, sputum and goodness knows what else might end up in the darnedest places, you’re close to the truth, and you’d be closer if you jettisoned the words “a little” from the beginning of sentence.

Men’s rooms are like the physical embodiment of toxic masculinity: That’s “toxic” as in “hazardous waste.”

On the whole, we men seem to find aiming, flushing, containing personal fluids and handwashing challenging in the extreme. I expect gas station bathrooms to be nasty and strangers to have dubious hygienic standards. I just never expected to see two long-ago colleagues leave the men’s room without washing their hands. (For a small gratuity, I might be convinced to name names.)

Thanks to one of my daughters, who is also grossed out from time to time by her fellow humans, I now know these former coworkers were hardly aberrant. According to a 2020 study by the University of Birmingham, in the U.S., 23% of people do not have a habit of washing their hands. And the U.S. is apparently one of the more sanitary countries it mentions.

In a 2007 survey, 94% of respondents said they always or usually wash their hands after going to the bathroom. Or so they claimed: The researchers also found that “only 63.4% of the observed participants did wash their hands after using public restrooms.”

I’m going to let that sink in for a second. Thirty-one percent of the dirty, duplicitous respondents LIED about washing their HANDS after GOING TO THE BATHROOM!

Man, it’s no wonder I get a case of food poisoning about once a year.

Learning this stuff — or rather, having my suspicions confirmed — has made me think about the things I do not want others to hand me.

Their hand. Let’s NOT shake on it. Can we just bump knuckles?

Their food. No, I really do not want to try a single bite of your in-progress meal. I am eating my own meal, thanks.

Beverages held like a claw. I’ve never appreciated when someone hands me a glass of whatever beverage and they’re holding it from the top, like their hand is one of those arcade claws for picking up a stuffed animal, except it’s their hand and it’s holding a glass, and their fingers touching every conceivable place I might put my mouth to take a sip. Dude. At least give me a (sealed) straw. I haven’t run into this in a while, but I’ve definitely had servers hand me a glass like that, and I’d remain thirsty until I returned to a trusted source of water. I don’t have an Oregon Food Handlers Card, but instructions on holding a glass well below its rim should be on the test.

Cell phones. Oh, you want me to look at something on your phone? Well, according to WebMD, cell phones can be up to 10 times nastier than a toilet seat. “It goes with you everywhere — even into the bathroom. As a result, it could be up to 10 times dirtier than a toilet seat. In fact, it could have E. coli on it.” Can you send me a link instead?

Toilet paper. Wait, hear me out. I’m thinking of a particular situation: You know when you stay at a hotel and there’s an in-progress roll on the dispenser, so the housekeeper does this little move where they make a triangle out of the piece hanging there? Rather than replace a roll that still has some life in it, they fold up the bottom corners to make the end into a point, as though that somehow renewed the roll’s life. This is a performative task that only accomplishes making me think of the many people who may have also used the roll, but also the poor housekeeper who had to fold the sheet’s end. This is why I always tip at hotels.

Honorable mention: Money. According to that same WebMD article, “Researchers found that most dollar bills are covered in 3,000 types of bacteria — everything from the germs that cause acne to microbes from people who lick their fingers when they count out bills.” No wonder they call it filthy lucre. However, like everyone, I need money to stay alive, so feel free to give me all the dirty money you want.

And if you do, I might tell you which of my former colleagues didn’t wash their hands — right after I wash mine.