Meet Hy and Gene
March 18th 2008 12:22
I've got an idea for an instructional video they can play in schools. It features two characters, Hycinthe and Gene, and it's called HY & GENE: THE HYGIENE TWINS!
These two hand-drawn characters with suspiciously basic lip sync animation would take frequent trips to bathrooms, where they'd talk kids through basic hygiene functions. I think it's important to start kids on this early, because I suspect that, these days, hygiene lessons have been replaced with Dressing Like a Skank Because Your Irresponsible Parents Bought You Bratz Dolls.
I say this because it's incredibly alarming to use a public toilet and... you know what? I'm going to leave that thought right there. It's incredibly alarming to use a public toilet. The state you find most of them in, you're left wondering if the people who left it in such a condition leave their own bathrooms in similar conditions. If they don't, why do it when they're out and about? Are they living out some fantasy where they see a public toilet and get to live out their inner desires by leaving it unflushed and/or covered in faeces? If so, I'd suggest aiming a little higher, both in their dreams and their urination.
Public bathrooms are, by and large, a disgrace. There's nothing new to that. Depressingly, I'm told Australian ones are amongst the best in the world, so if I ever go, say, backpacking across Europe for six months, I'm probably going to have to hold it in the entire time. (Or, you know, stay in a hotel.) What concerns me more, however, are the people who use them.
I've been male for quite some time now, and consequently, I've been using male toilets (these being toilets for males, not toilets with their own distinct genitalia). Though I do everything in my power to avert my eyes from anyone in visual range, I do sometimes get to catch the post-deposit hygienics of those in my fellow gender. That's when my mouth drops to the floor... or rather, it would had I not welded it firmly shut before entering said bathroom.
Before I launch into this, I'm going to happily report to you that about ten per cent of men know how to properly clean themselves. It may not sound like much, but it still averages out to about three hundred million men across the globe, and that's nothing to spit at. And even if it was, they'd clean the spit off promptly and rub anti-bacterial oil over themselves.
The remaining men can be placed in the following categories:
1. Category one does not bother with cleanliness, nor does he bother with the pretense of cleanliness. Having finished what he came in for, the man will head straight for the door, where his girlfriend will be waiting on the other side to hand him the chips he was halfway through eating. It's small consolation, but it's probably worth noting that most of these fellows were using the urinal. Still quite off-putting, but less so than the alternative.
2. Not wanting to embarrass himself too much in front of his fellow man, the chaps in category two will approach the basin, check their hair in the mirror, and then leave. The assumption here is that nobody else is really paying that much attention (observant writers aside), and will, in some part of their brain, vaguely register that the man, between using the toilet and using the door, was standing near the basin, and so therefore must have washed his hands. Therefore, when both men exit and approach their girlfriends and the girlfriends realise they know each other and everybody immediately decides to go out together for a meal, the other guy doesn't -- halfway through the fish course -- say "You know that running your hands through your greasy follicles doesn't actually adequately supplant the hand-washing process, right?".
3. There's a frightening number of men in category three. The ones who go to the sink and either submerge their hands under the water, or, more commonly, wave their hands within several inches of where the water is, and then wipe the hands on their trousers. Though wiping their hands on their trousers is going to make said trousers fairly damp and not pleasant to wear, look at, or be around, I don't actually have a problem with this stage of the proceedings. See, if you've done the initial job properly (ie: cleaning your hands the way you're supposed to), then all you're wiping off is excess water, and if you absolutely have to have some sort of inappropriate bathroom habit, this is better than most. But no, the issue in category three is that the soap is usually bypassed. Most soap found in public bathrooms is of such poor quality you'd probably be just as well off rubbing your hands on the urinal cakes as you exit, but I don't think that's why so many men avoid it. The process in category three is all about feeling as if you're clean. Whether they're actually clean or not, placing your hands under running water and then drying them actually does make them feel clean, which is why it's such so popular. This is a dangerous game of self-deception, because if you're operating under the misapprehension that your hands are actually clean, you may unwittingly shake hands with some poor unsuspecting soul or serve someone spaghetti with your fingers or perform open heart surgery without really thinking about where your digits have been. At least the guys in category one know that they're being unclean. If they suddenly come down with the plague, they've no one to blame but themselves. I suppose the same can be said of category three men, but with the self-deception involved, they'll probably blame some unwitting fast food outlet and sue them to death.
These behaviours should explain why I infrequently eat from communal food bowls at parties unless I know I'm the first to get to it. I recently saw somebody do something incredibly unhygienic, and then moments later pick up a bowl of M&Ms and run their fingers through it over and over again, as if they'd just been presented with some smooth stones you're supposed to play with in order to relax yourself. Coming so fast on the heels of the unhygienic act, I was even more shocked when the bowl was thrust, well-meaningly, into my face. Suddenly leaning away from them, I bent over backwards so fast, that I felt like a character in an incredibly boring MATRIX movie. Sorry, that was a tautology. I felt like a character in a MATRIX movie.
When I see Michael Jackson or Howie Mandel do everything they can to avoid shaking hands with people, I actually think "Hey, there's a rare sign of sanity!". If you knew what I knew about guys, you'd probably cross the street to avoid them on the off-chance they fit into the above ninety percent.
At the risk of making this about something else entirely, I actually believe that this is some sort of contributing factor to the formation of lesbians. I don't think it's necessarily genetic, I just think that some girls wander into male bathroom by accident, catch a glimpse of the hygiene habits, and resolve never to touch men again. (I've floated this theory to my lesbian friends, who generally either roll their eyes or slap me. I assume this is Lesbian for "Great theory!", although the ones who slap me then clutch their hands and run off to wash them, just in case.)
Either way, I think we could learn a lot of Hyacinthe and Gene, the Hygiene Twins.
These two hand-drawn characters with suspiciously basic lip sync animation would take frequent trips to bathrooms, where they'd talk kids through basic hygiene functions. I think it's important to start kids on this early, because I suspect that, these days, hygiene lessons have been replaced with Dressing Like a Skank Because Your Irresponsible Parents Bought You Bratz Dolls.
I say this because it's incredibly alarming to use a public toilet and... you know what? I'm going to leave that thought right there. It's incredibly alarming to use a public toilet. The state you find most of them in, you're left wondering if the people who left it in such a condition leave their own bathrooms in similar conditions. If they don't, why do it when they're out and about? Are they living out some fantasy where they see a public toilet and get to live out their inner desires by leaving it unflushed and/or covered in faeces? If so, I'd suggest aiming a little higher, both in their dreams and their urination.
Public bathrooms are, by and large, a disgrace. There's nothing new to that. Depressingly, I'm told Australian ones are amongst the best in the world, so if I ever go, say, backpacking across Europe for six months, I'm probably going to have to hold it in the entire time. (Or, you know, stay in a hotel.) What concerns me more, however, are the people who use them.
I've been male for quite some time now, and consequently, I've been using male toilets (these being toilets for males, not toilets with their own distinct genitalia). Though I do everything in my power to avert my eyes from anyone in visual range, I do sometimes get to catch the post-deposit hygienics of those in my fellow gender. That's when my mouth drops to the floor... or rather, it would had I not welded it firmly shut before entering said bathroom.
Before I launch into this, I'm going to happily report to you that about ten per cent of men know how to properly clean themselves. It may not sound like much, but it still averages out to about three hundred million men across the globe, and that's nothing to spit at. And even if it was, they'd clean the spit off promptly and rub anti-bacterial oil over themselves.
The remaining men can be placed in the following categories:
1. Category one does not bother with cleanliness, nor does he bother with the pretense of cleanliness. Having finished what he came in for, the man will head straight for the door, where his girlfriend will be waiting on the other side to hand him the chips he was halfway through eating. It's small consolation, but it's probably worth noting that most of these fellows were using the urinal. Still quite off-putting, but less so than the alternative.
2. Not wanting to embarrass himself too much in front of his fellow man, the chaps in category two will approach the basin, check their hair in the mirror, and then leave. The assumption here is that nobody else is really paying that much attention (observant writers aside), and will, in some part of their brain, vaguely register that the man, between using the toilet and using the door, was standing near the basin, and so therefore must have washed his hands. Therefore, when both men exit and approach their girlfriends and the girlfriends realise they know each other and everybody immediately decides to go out together for a meal, the other guy doesn't -- halfway through the fish course -- say "You know that running your hands through your greasy follicles doesn't actually adequately supplant the hand-washing process, right?".
3. There's a frightening number of men in category three. The ones who go to the sink and either submerge their hands under the water, or, more commonly, wave their hands within several inches of where the water is, and then wipe the hands on their trousers. Though wiping their hands on their trousers is going to make said trousers fairly damp and not pleasant to wear, look at, or be around, I don't actually have a problem with this stage of the proceedings. See, if you've done the initial job properly (ie: cleaning your hands the way you're supposed to), then all you're wiping off is excess water, and if you absolutely have to have some sort of inappropriate bathroom habit, this is better than most. But no, the issue in category three is that the soap is usually bypassed. Most soap found in public bathrooms is of such poor quality you'd probably be just as well off rubbing your hands on the urinal cakes as you exit, but I don't think that's why so many men avoid it. The process in category three is all about feeling as if you're clean. Whether they're actually clean or not, placing your hands under running water and then drying them actually does make them feel clean, which is why it's such so popular. This is a dangerous game of self-deception, because if you're operating under the misapprehension that your hands are actually clean, you may unwittingly shake hands with some poor unsuspecting soul or serve someone spaghetti with your fingers or perform open heart surgery without really thinking about where your digits have been. At least the guys in category one know that they're being unclean. If they suddenly come down with the plague, they've no one to blame but themselves. I suppose the same can be said of category three men, but with the self-deception involved, they'll probably blame some unwitting fast food outlet and sue them to death.
These behaviours should explain why I infrequently eat from communal food bowls at parties unless I know I'm the first to get to it. I recently saw somebody do something incredibly unhygienic, and then moments later pick up a bowl of M&Ms and run their fingers through it over and over again, as if they'd just been presented with some smooth stones you're supposed to play with in order to relax yourself. Coming so fast on the heels of the unhygienic act, I was even more shocked when the bowl was thrust, well-meaningly, into my face. Suddenly leaning away from them, I bent over backwards so fast, that I felt like a character in an incredibly boring MATRIX movie. Sorry, that was a tautology. I felt like a character in a MATRIX movie.
When I see Michael Jackson or Howie Mandel do everything they can to avoid shaking hands with people, I actually think "Hey, there's a rare sign of sanity!". If you knew what I knew about guys, you'd probably cross the street to avoid them on the off-chance they fit into the above ninety percent.
At the risk of making this about something else entirely, I actually believe that this is some sort of contributing factor to the formation of lesbians. I don't think it's necessarily genetic, I just think that some girls wander into male bathroom by accident, catch a glimpse of the hygiene habits, and resolve never to touch men again. (I've floated this theory to my lesbian friends, who generally either roll their eyes or slap me. I assume this is Lesbian for "Great theory!", although the ones who slap me then clutch their hands and run off to wash them, just in case.)
Either way, I think we could learn a lot of Hyacinthe and Gene, the Hygiene Twins.
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