The things that make me squeam

Some synonyms for “squeamish” may surprise you: scrupulous, principled, honorable, upright. These come to me as a pleasant surprise since I am known for my squeamishness and ashamed of it. 

But I cannot claim the high-mindedness those words suggest. The synonyms for my kind of squeamish run along the lines of paranoid, phobic, selfish, suspicious, and, at best, commonsensical.

Among the things that make my skin crawl: warm subway poles, warm telephone receivers, warm toilet seats, warm drinking water, drinking water with ice, iPhones with smeared or cracked screens, a human sharing a tub of cottage cheese with a cat, a human sharing food from a plate with another human, leftovers of any kind but particularly Chinese takeout. And then there are the things that make everybody recoil but induce a more severe, phobic response in me: lice, ticks, mosquitoes, bedbugs, the odor of mildew.

Paradoxically, I’m comfortable changing soiled diapers on the young or old, but dog shit on my shoe can ruin my life. And though I am freakishly fearful of contracting lice or ticks, I have no problem removing parasites from the bodies of others—as long as the extractions take place at their house and I can make a speedy exit for my own shower and laundry. Indeed, I became an in-demand louse picker when my kids were in school. I picked the heads of children, parents, friends, and grandparents without turning a hair, so to speak. I’m also an enthusiastic popper of pimples, my own or others’. 

I try to control my squeamishness, or at least hide it. After all, nothing squelches good feeling faster than refusing a friend a taste of your food. So I’ve become adept at demurrals like “I feel a cold coming on, and I don’t want to give it to you.” Only close friends may have noticed I’ve had a cold coming on continuously for years now, but physical symptoms rarely appear.

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