MadMup.com

From The Consumerist:

If you object to George Costanza’s habit of double dipping—now you have a scientific study to back it up.

The study was conducted by Prof. Paul L. Dawson, a food microbiologist, who decided to experiment with “double dipping” after watching a Seinfeld re-run in which a character named “Timmy” objects to George’s dubious dipping habits.

Professor Dawson told the New York Times that he expected “little or no microbial transfer” as a result of double dipping.

He was wrong.

Double dippers are just as gross as you’ve always suspected:

The team of nine students instructed volunteers to take a bite of a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into about a tablespoon of a test dip. They then repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. They didn’t determine whether any of the bacteria were harmful, and didn’t count anaerobic bacteria, which are harder to culture, or viruses.

There were six test dips: sterile water with three different degrees of acidity, a commercial salsa, a cheese dip and chocolate syrup.

On average, the students found that three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip.

Each cracker picked up between one and two grams of dip. That means that sporadic double dipping in a cup of dip would transfer at least 50 to 100 bacteria from one mouth to another with every bite.

Yuck. So, what now? “The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, would I be willing to kiss everyone here? Because you don’t know who might be double dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you,” says Professor Dawson.

Germs. You can’t trust ’em.

Somewhere in the past couple of months I’ve picked up a new quirk. When you hold a drink from Starbucks or McDonald’s, your hand forms a letter C, right? I have developed this notion that I’m going to drop things because I can’t hold them tightly enough, so to combat this surety, I curl my pinkie finger in underneath the cup, forming a little ledge for the cup to sit on.

It struck me recently that this might be a little strange. I’ve been holding glasses and cups for most of my life, so why am I just now figuring I’m going to start dropping them?

One thing some of you might not understand is that this sort of thing seems completely normal and logical to me when I institute it:

• Problem: cup might fall out of my hand because I can’t grip it tightly enough.
• Solution: form ledge with pinkie for cup to sit on.

It isn’t until much later that it hits me that this might not be the most sane thing, coming up with solutions to imagined problems.

This new oddity seems to go right along with my belief that the hanging lights and ceiling fans in the auditorium at church are going to fall on my head – no where else, mind you, do I have that thought. It’s only the ones at church.

I’m reading a book right now where the author has just talked about how he had conversations with Emily Dickinson when he was spending a lot of time not around other people. I kind of shook my head at that one, thinking it was silly for him to talk to imaginary or long-dead people, and it was right in the middle of me telling the cats that I thought it was silly that I realized I didn’t have much place to think it was silly.

His point ended up being – and I think he’s on to something – that we need to be around people so we don’t lose sight of “normal” behavior and how it is we’re supposed to be around people. Of course, it’s still pretty easy for me to think that forming a pinkie ledge for my drink is a good idea, because I’m pretty sure even Emily Dickinson would say that it’s not good to drop your drinks around other people.

I got a call the other day from a number I didn’t recognize (so, of course, I didn’t answer it), and after the voicemail notification sounded off, I checked the message. It was the lady who has cut my hair for about two years, if I’m counting correctly. She was calling to let me know that she was going to be working at a different haircutting place (“salon” sounds so hoity-toity) once January 29th rolled around. She didn’t actually say “so you should start going to that place,” but it was pretty clear that’s what she meant. She even mentioned that it was going to be $4 cheaper.

My initial response was panic. I’m not such a fan of change, as many of you know, and I’d gone through this changing haircuttists before. So, panic.

But then I thought it was nice that she called me to let me know that she was going elsewhere. I realize her motivation wasn’t necessarily motivated by altruism, but it was still nice for me since my last regular person sorta just up and left with no advance warning.

Then, after that, I started thinking about how I’d been going to the same place for 4+ years – it seemed weird to think about abandoning the place. This put me back in a quandary: do I stick with the place, or stick with the person?

What would you do?