Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Summertime – hot, dry windy weather – brief thunderstorms.
FACT-CHECKING
The current World Almanac contains these facts:
If you were born in 1937, as was a man I know, your life expectancy was 59 years, plus or minus a few.
If you have lived into your 88th year, as has the same man, you can expect to live another 5 years, plus or minus a few.
Progress?
The current cultural conversation is focused on aging and death these days. Something I don’t write about but do think about.
That and fact-checking.
Most personal injury accidents occur within 25 miles of your home.
Moving 25 miles away won’t help.
Because you go with you if you move.
And the problem is you.
Statistically speaking.
The most dangerous person in your life is the person you sleep next to. Domestic violence is most likely to come from your husband/wife/lover.
And you are the most threat to them.
You are a very dangerous person.
Statistically speaking.
(advice: sleep alone)
The most pain and sorrow you will ever experience will come from those who are family – blood kin, in-laws, spouses – those who say “I love you” will hurt you the most. And you are the most likely to cause pain to them.
Statistically speaking.
You are not likely to die in an airplane crash or terrorist attack or be hit by lightning or catch mad cow disease or AIDs or develop termites.
You will most likely die in an automobile accident.
When you are driving.
Statistically speaking.
The most likely place for you to catch a contagious disease is from holding the handle of a supermarket grocery cart or from touching a small child.
You are courting illness or death if you do.
Statistically speaking.
The most toxic place in your house is your kitchen sink.
The most germ-ridden item in your house is not your toilet.
It’s your kitchen sponge.
The one you use to wash dishes, clean your shoes, and wipe the floor with.
You are a spreader of deadly disease.
Statistically speaking.
Information like this piles up in the back of my head, collects dust, and life goes on – until a new factoid comes along – raising the fear factor to red.
And I am temporarily alarmed all over again.
The kitchen sponge thing, for example.
So, I checked it out on the web and got cold chills from what I read.
Trillions of bacteria of the deadliest kind are in the kitchen sponge.
E-coli, the Plague, athlete’s foot, dandruff, Dutch Elm disease, Hantavirus.
The kitchen sponge is a neutron bomb ready to go off.
Oh, no! Who knew?
I should be dead by now.
But I am apparently not.
There’s this microbiome thing.
I am inhabited by a gazillion microbes, bacteria, viruses, and all kinds of tiny creatures that independently contribute to my inner existence.
My gut is a war zone – a condominium of competing microbes.
So.
Home is dangerous, my companion is dangerous, my relatives are dangerous, grocery carts are dangerous, little kids are dangerous, I am dangerous . . .
And now . . . the kitchen sponge.
How have I survived this long?
How can I go on?
The solution seems to be microwaves.
Put the sponge in the microwave every day.
Just don’t eat it.
So, I microwaved the hell out of the kitchen sponge.
Am I safe now?
No.
Why do I want to live forever?