There are 2 types of men in this world...

I was recently reminded of something one of my senior officers said to me when I was a young mechanic in the military. Dressed in my dirty coveralls, I was washing my oil covered hands in the workshop bathroom when the officer came in to use the toilet. Due to his seniority and his rank he wore smart uniform and was long past the 'getting dirty' days of his career. He said to me; "Son, there are two types of men in this world, those that wash their hands before they use the toilet and those that wash their hands afterwards - be proud of who you are..." I muttered my; "yes sir" as, without another word he walked out!

That comment resonated with me and sunk in to this day; with my manual job I would always be the type of guy who washed his hands before using the bathroom! Fast forward 30 years and the topic of hand washing comes up in the pub where a few of us, (men) are contentedly putting the world to rights over a beer or two! I don't want to get crude here, (you don't have to read it all!) but what are we saying about our bodily hygiene if we feel compelled to wash our hands after touching ourselves yet not before? I'm not talking about people in food preparation, medical or other sterile type professions here; I'm talking about normal day to day life and what we touch as we go about our day.

To use the day in question as an example my hours leading up to the evening were like this; We were on a motorcycling trip and were all staying in a motel so after the day's ride was over I showered to go out for dinner. I put fresh clean clothes onto my fresh clean body and left the motel room. On the way out I opened and closed at least three public doors used by hundreds daily, operated the buttons of the elevator, opened the taxi's outside door handle, opened the taxi's inside door handle, paid the driver with used notes previously handled by thousands and gone into the pub - using the door handle again! I drank from two glasses handled by at least two people, ate off a plate and used cutlery also handled by at least two other people who were, in the course of their day, handling dozens of other glasses, plates, cutlery and whatever else they have to clear up from tables. I then went to the bathroom using, yes you guessed it, the door handle. I did what I needed to do and returned to my friends...

Using common sense and logic; at what point was it more important that I should have washed my hands - before or after???