Bad Habits: Eating off the floor

So... I Live at home, and am very fortunate to do so. My mother, like myself (nature-nurture debate anyone?), is a bit of a clean freak. So, we keep our house in good working order. Clean the shower regularly, do dishes right after dinner, and vacuum. Clean floors is very important in my home. It's nice to be able to walk around and not step on things. More importantly, it allows for fair use of the "Five Second Rule". You know, when you drop food on the floor, and it is still good for five seconds? I'm sure if I looked real hard I could find some studies that tell me that even on a regularly vacuumed and washed floor, five seconds is still too long. Regardless, I still eat the food I drop at home. I'm a messy eater too, so if I didn't practice this habit, I'd probably go hungry; not to mention it would dirty up my floor (see the cycle?).

Anyways... I'm walking through the halls of the university, just outside the neuroscience lab, and there's a french fry on the ground. Instinctively, I stopped, and bent my knees in anticipation of going down and fetching that fry up, saving it from the disgrace of not being eaten. Thank goodness I stopped myself. This is no knock on the custodial staff here, as they do good work, but the amount of traffic they have to deal with doesn't allow for them to keep the floors here safe for eating.

But could you imagine? Actually seeing someone do this? Eating something off of the floor, in public?! I'm damn near tempted to make it happen, cause that french fry looked damn tasty... It even had cheese on it! At least, I think it was cheese. It could've been dirt, or even squished potato cause someone stepped on it.

That's another thing... Who steps on a perfectly good french fry? What if someone really and truly wanted to eat it? Think of the joy and nutritional value that they essentially stole from some potentially needy individual... Ok, that might be a bit extreme. Hehehe...

As clean as I try to keep my environment, eating things off the floor has backfired. Sometimes, I bring chicken sandwiches into the lab and eat there (we're not supposed to eat in the lab), and one time I dropped a piece on the ground, and it was too big and tasty looking to leave behind. So... I ate it. I haven't felt the adverse effects physically, but I was ridiculed socially by my co-workers. I like barbequed chicken more than my co-workers though.

This other time, I was at home, eating clod-hoppers. Chocolate ones. Man, they were tasty. Anyways, I dropped on the floor, and it sorta tumbled away from me, out of sight. Not to let it go to waste, I go scrounging for it. I pick up what I thought was a clod-hopper. It looked like a clod-hopper, it even felt like clod-hopper, but brother, it ...

So, a little side note here... I wanted to say "but brother, it ain't no clod-hopper". But grammatically, that'd be incorrect. I need the past tense version of ain't. What the hell is that?! Weren't? Wasn't (too formal)? Wain't? Twas not (WAY too formal)? My friend just suggested "i'nt". ... My friend is an idiot. I think I'll go with weren't.

... but brother, it weren't no clod-hopper (yeah, that sounds right)!! It had this weird granule texture, almost like coffee grinds... It just wasn't pleasant.

Anyways, here's a link to an article by the Washington Post on the "Five Second Rule". There's lots of other blogs that come up if you google it too.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701294_pf.html