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Lesbian blind date
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What he doesn't say is what can happen next: that what ends up on the careless wiper's hands could somehow get into your mashed potatoes. Unpleasant? Yes. A reasonable fear? I don't know.

I'd never really thought about these sorts of things until a nearby restaurant became the not-so-proud host of the country's most recent hepatitis hysteria. And, to be fair, I didn't really have reason to. Never mind that hepatitis A -- which showed up two weeks ago in the blood of a waiter at the Texas Steakhouse & Saloon in Smithfield, N.C. -- is a strain that, despite a host of unpleasant symptoms (nausea, jaundice, diarrhea), rarely if ever turns fatal. There's also a pretty low risk of restaurant transmission. Over the last seven years, 54 North Carolina restaurants have reported an infected employee; not a single diner got the bug.

But hepatitis never sounds good on a menu. And looking at the Smithfield case, it was startling to see how quickly word of the scare spread, in large part because of the government's attitude toward the virus.

Part of it I understand. We all have our quirky hysterias. A friend of mine is so germphobic she won't turn doorknobs and is prone to pre-lunch disappearances in search of a bathroom sink in which to wash her hands. Another friend used to massage in generous gobs of a hand disinfectant -- "KILLS 99.9 % OF GERMS," the label read -- until she heard that such practices might lead to stronger, cream-resistant monster germs. I have issues, too, demonstrated particularly by the fact that I have never, not in my 28 years, knowingly sat on a toilet seat I did not either own or rent. And when I wash my hands in a public restroom I'm inevitably faced with a crisis: Turn off the water and thereby reinfect myself on the faucet or leave it running and commit one of the top three environmental sins?

Here's how the hysteria went down in Smithfield: On Aug. 9, a gentleman walked into the emergency room at Johnston Memorial Hospital. It didn't take a doctor to tell that his skin was yeller, as they say down here, a pretty sure sign of jaundice. The fellow said he'd been working as a waiter at the nearby Texas Steakhouse. Badaboom. Just like that, the wheels started turning in a process that would leave many North Carolinians in the rare position of actually thinking about their livers.

Take note: This is a state that ignored its hog factories until their waste lagoons overflowed into rivers, leaving schools of dead, lesion-covered fish behind.

So now we're worried that some punk waiter didn't wipe his ass right?

Next page | "That's just what I need, hepatitis for our wedding"