Ollieboy

Won't the alchohol in the sink kill all the germs? If not add more. 🤔🤔

jaymatt Loc: Alexandria, Indiana

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

My wife is in healthcare and is a germophobe. I was a farmer and worked a lot with large piles of manure. I ate dirt (not directly, but I would pull a carrot out of the ground and wipe most of the soil off it and eat it in the field). My wife washes her hands 628 times a day. I wash my hands maybe twice a day.

My wife gets gastrointestinal problems occasionally. I don't.

I keep telling her that germs are good for you. You have to exercise your body, you have to exercise your mind. You also have to exercise your immune system. She says my genes are better than hers. I suspect that we both have a piece of the truth. Your genes determine how strong your immune system COULD BE, but if you don't exercise it, you will lose it.

Sample of two. Not enough for a real study.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The fountains in my school shot the water up a few inches. I didn't have to lick it out of a dish.

Parents always told kids not to let their lips touch anything but the water. I avoid drinking fountains, though. People who camp on a regular basis know that you need a special hose - a white one - for your drinking water. A garden hose is not suitable.

Canisdirus

I'll assume that black tie is optional.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

But a tie clip is mandatory.

Canisdirus

Heh...more like a phone call explaining I cannot make it to the...soiree.

Juan Dinero Loc: Southeast Colorado

I grew up without running water, we had a water bucket with a dipper that we all shared. During roundups and branding we might have ten or more hands sharing the same dipper and never thought anything about it and no one ever go sick.Same with the windmills,always had a tin can tied to the tower leg for anyone that needed a drink.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

My wife, two daughters and I camped across the US twice and once across Canada. (all summer - never slept indoors) We carried a green garden hose and two 2 gal. collapsible containers for water in our Nimrod Popup camper. No one was sick. My older daughter did fall off a swing and needed stiches in her chin at a local hospital. Wonderful experiences.
Mark

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I haven’t seen a working public fountain in years. The airports have water bottle filling stations but no fountains. Thinking of those brings up memories of my elementary schools classes coming in for recess and all lining up for a drink at the water fountain and some taking so long they must have drunk a gallon!

Stan

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

I think we went to different schools together, Stan!
Mark

Scouser Loc: British Columbia

I grew up in the late 40's too, in Liverpool. We used to try and swim in the Mersey estuary, off New Brighton, but the water was so polluted we could only go through the motions!

dustie Loc: Nose to the grindstone

Add one more to your sample.

My hands have been dirty with something, more often than not, in my work. Not often in the ranching and timbering type jobs was running water available, unless it so happened there was a creek or river next to the work area. Lot of the time just a wipe with a shop rag, or a wipe on the pant legs, was the cleaning the hands got before going to work on lunch grub......the immune system probably got plenty of active exercise.

Short story: one ranch where I worked, it was common for them during lambing season, to hire a few kind of down and out fellows, through contacts with the rescue mission/detox center down in the city. Those temporary hires helped at the lambing shed to do pen cleaning and helped one of the regular ranch guys feed out hay to the cows and whatever sheep were still out away from the lambing activity area, since those of us who ordinarily did the winter feeding had all our time occupied in the lambing activities.

One day, the two of us who spent our day with the tractor and "lamb wagon" patrolling the 8 acre pen filled with ewes who were near to, or at their time to give birth, reached into the small equipment shack at the drop-off pens when we unloaded another load of ewes with brand new lambs we'd just brought in.

The temp fellow from the city who was cleaning up there, saw us reach into that little shack, wipe our hands on a rag that was hanging there, then pull out a candy bar each from the "snack box" that was in there on a shelf.
He turned a couple or three shades of green as we non-chalantly peeled back the candy wrappers and bit into the chocolate.

The other ranch guy with me got a chuckle out of that and asked him why he was looking kind of green around the gills.
The city fellow said, "You guys have been out there in all that sheep poop, picking up wet, new lambs off that ground, handling those ewes with God knows what all in their wool, had your arms inside some of those ewes that are having problems, even up to your elbows on a couple of them.......then you come in here and just unwrap a candy bar just like that and eat it?!?!?!"

Barely containing his laughter, our ranch guy asked him, "When you are slumped down in an alley with some of your pals, don't you guys just pass a bottle around and take your turn getting a swig, regardless who else just had that in their mouth?"

The poor ol' green-gilled guy kind of bristled defensively and said, "Well sure!!! But that's different!!!"

My ranch work partner guy cracked up laughing every so often for two or three days about that.

carlberg

Alcohol concentration has to be at least about 70% (140 proof) to be effective. Them's potent drinks.

dustie Loc: Nose to the grindstone

I recall a couple of those drinking fountains with such poor water pressure that the water barely did more than dribble off the edge of the outlet.

Many occasions, I witnessed a couple boys in one of those schools put their lips right over the fixture and suck on it like drinking from a straw.