‘Never trust someone who does not wash his or her hands after going to the toilet’
That post from a Facebook friend got me all fired up to write about the topic I have wanted to discuss a long time ago.
Really, how can you trust someone who denies himself or herself of the basic respect and dignity for the self? Yes, washing one’s hands after every toilet visit is one’s showcase of one’s love for the self. One — for health reasons. You love yourself, you wash your hands. Because it is expected of every sane human being to be hygienic. I will not delve on the community of germs and bacteria that resides on the hands after we urinate. Shaking the willy is not enough. Running water and soap are needed to ensure that we come out of the toilet safe. And that we are safe, too, when we shake hands of other people. Or even when we turn that door knob, hold the railings of the escalator or even pressing those up-and-down arrows in the elevator.
Two — washing the hands is our simple courtesy to others around us. It is our display of respect for others. Imagine you are in a social event and everybody partakes of those peanuts in that little bowl. How many of those who dip their hands in the bowl wash their hands? Honesty is involved. Because honesty to the self translates to being concerned about the welfare of others. So, washing the hands is beyond cleanliness and hygiene. It traverses to the elementary knowledge that others around us are important, too, in our existence.
“Your thoughts are too deep,” my male cousin tells me. “Isn’t it an elitist point of view?” he counters. Me? Elitist? I come from the barrio!
“By the way, I always wash my hands,” he adds quickly.
Let me not start a class war just because I believe that washing one’s hands after using the toilet is a must. (Take note, aside from washing the hands, many people should also learn to always flush the toilet.)
A long time ago, when I was still involved in an R&D project in the hinterlands of Zamboanga del Norte, I lived with a family in a farming community that had no electricity and no running water. These rural folk demonstrated their being urbane by washing their hands after taking a break at their makeshift toilets. Mind you, they got their water from a communal well. And on standby was a bar of Ajax on a slab of rock that was used as a soapdish.
And I have also witnessed refined, cultured and polished gentlemen who, after taking a leak, just zip up, wipe their hands on the sides of their pants. They look at themselves in the mirror, their reflections narcissistically flashing a smile at them, and leave the room. The faucet below the mirror is already hissing, coaxing them to turn its puny handle so water may flow. But still they don’t wash their hands. “Baka ayaw mapasma,” a lady friend says in jest. Even her joke, I take seriously.
What if the call of nature happens in the middle of the road, no toilet in sight, and the quickest way is to dangle a man’s modifier and aims it at the trees in the highway? Okay, it’s already an offense to urinate in public. Double jeopardy it is that you don’t have wipes or rubbing alcohol or sanitizer in your bag, in your car. If there’s a small bottle of mouthwash you can put in your pocket, there’s also a small vial of sanitizer you can bring around. That’s not being OC. That’s just having a little self-respect.
How long should you wash your hands? An official of the Department of Health once said by the time you finish singing Happy Birthday three times in your head is good enough to thoroughly wash your hands. I find washing my hands my extra moment with God. In my mind, as the water flows, I recite the “Lord’s Prayer,” “Hail Mary” and “Glory be.” Complete with a sign of the cross before and after.
There’s always a hand dryer ready at my office’s Men’s Room. But I stopped using it when our copyboy Ronnie Ramos told me hand dryers dry up the hands. So, I’m back to using my hanky or tissue to dry my hands. Yes, Ronnie has the monastic habit of washing his hands after every trip to the toilet to urinate.
It may seem a mundane concern that does seem to merit an attention in the event of a D-Day. So let’s put meaning to the mundane. But while Armageddon is not in sight, and I hope it won’t come, we should all be wary that a little courtesy to the self will go a long way in the sphere of respecting others. Methinks it’s easier to trust a person who washes his or her hands after using the toilet.
So, wash your hands after every visit to the toilet — even if others do not, even if others cannot, even if others will not.