When other girls my age were giggling about kissing boys, I
became nauseous. Kissing! Letting someone put their germy lips on
mine! No way! I didn’t even want anyone to touch my hands
and I was always using a packaged wipe when they did. This was annoying to many people because I
refused to shake hands with them. I would just nod my head in acknowledgment,
but I simply couldn’t stand the thought of someone touching my hands when I
didn’t know if their hands were clean or not.
Needless to say, getting through
high school was a real challenge. I did
not participate in any sports and finally managed to get a doctor’s permission
to be excused from gym classes. I
couldn’t stomach the idea of working up a sweat and then having to share a
shower with other people. I didn’t know
who cleaned the showers or what cleaning solutions they used to clean them so I
wasn’t about to get into one.
At first my teachers thought I was a
little odd, but then they realized that I was really serious. Every time I walked into a classroom, I had
my “disinfectant wipe” with me, wiping down the desk before I sat down. I never borrowed a pen or pencil from other
people and could barely handle getting a paper back from the teacher. I had to grit my teeth and handle the edge of
the paper.
One day, someone thought it would be funny to see my
reaction, if I couldn’t get to my wipes before touching anything. They hid my purse. I freaked out. I wasn’t as concerned about someone stealing from
me as I was at the thought of not being able to clean my desk. I made such a commotion about it that finally
the purse magically appeared. That led
to a lecture from the teacher about the importance of not fooling around with
other peoples’ property. I half-heard
the lecture because I was too busy trying to compose myself and in looking for
a wipe to clean my desk and my purse.
After all, someone else had actually touched it.
As bad as things were in high school, it wasn’t until I
started working that I realized I had a problem. No place was ever clean enough and my
co-workers couldn’t stand the fact that I had to wipe down everything before
doing anything. They complained and I
was finally fired. My first job, while I was in high school, gone down the
tubes. Now I had to really think about how I was going to make a living and
still not be attacked with other folks’ germs.
That was not going to be easy.
Instead of life getting better, it became more
complicated. Now, I discovered that I
really didn’t want to be around people who were sneezing and coughing and
touching. The only problem was, I didn’t
know how to prepare myself for a job that didn’t require me to be around other
people. So, I did some research on my
home computer and discovered that I could finish high school and go to college
through online courses. I did just
that. Of course, the initial meetings of
the classes always caused me some concern because they were face-to-face
meetings. And at the end of each one,
inevitably, someone would try to shake my hand and I would have to politely
move away from them.
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