Shipmates,
Exciting news aboard the Pequod! It turns out that the dirty, dirty fiends
we carry as cargo—“passengers,” or even “guests” my Seatltonian overlords
insist—have lived up to my very worst expectations. It seems that these swine,
so content to wallow in their filth, have managed to incubate some form of the
dreaded* novovirus aboard the mighty vessel that is my humble abode! Routinely
I see said porcine passengers—egad! how that word sticks in my muscle-bound
throat!—oinking from one room to another ignoring the ample number of
sanitizing stations; these beasts even go so far as to turn up their little
piggy noses at my colleagues who wait on the gangway to dose their
dirt-encrusted hooves upon their return.
And why, you might justly ask, would these foul detritus-loving critters
so disdain the cleansing spray of chemical cleaner so vital to keeping us all
happy and healthy? Three reasons I have ascertained: the first is pure
laziness. It turns out that as one ages, one comes to the conclusion that one
has “done enough” in this great valley of suffering and it’s time to “reap the
rewards.” Apparently one of the rewards for being a productive member of
society for 60 or 70 years is the privilege of not washing your hands after using
the washroom. That and you are allowed to be rude to anyone working in customer
service. Especially Asian people working in customer service.
The second reason why these folk deign to use the spray is, it turns out,
for so-called health reasons. Here is an actual conversation** I overheard in
the dining room:
“These guys are always trying to get me to use those chemical sprays when
I get on the boat” One sweaty man said to the couple that was joining him and
his wife for breakfast. As the red-faced man negotiated his ample midsection
into the chair, his wife took up the thought. “We said to them, ‘no way buster’
we’re not puttin’ that crap on our skin.”
“Yea,” said the equally rotund and red-faced new-found mealtime companion,
“but their English is so bad, they don’t understand a plain ‘no.’”
“Ya’ll just gotta be forceful. I told that one guy ‘NO’ in plain old
Amurican English, and let me tell you, he backed right up.” Said the man now
safely wedged between the sturdy armrests of the chair. His wife continued, “We
understand that they are just doing their job, but we don’t want that poison on
us! No sir!” She stated vehemently as she tucked into her third helping of
dessert.
“Oh, I know exactly what you mean!” Her wifely counterpart said, gesticulating
with one of the 30 slices of bacon piled on her plate. “I mean, who knows what the long-term effects of that stuff will
be!” She said and bit into the syrup-covered French toast.
At this point I had to go back to
work, but I’m sure these fine citizens spent the next 30 minutes enjoying their
well-deserved seconds and thirds and enumerating the potential—nay!
Enveitable—health risks associated with Virox. So it turns out these
barely-mobile, sugar and grease swilling lumps are health freaks. Who knew.
The third and final reason that I think these cloven-hoofed plate jockeys refuse
to indulge in the occasional squirt aboard the Pequod I just stumbled upon last
night. Imagine the scene, dear reader: your humble narrator comfortably seated
behind his desk with a piping-hot double espresso to enliven his senses and the
last 50 pages of Anne of Green Gables
to transport his imagination to a land of whimsy and sentiment. Approaching,
slowly, decrepitly, one the elderly with some concerns to vent. He wants to
know why the shutters are all closed in the library.*** When I explain to him
that people browsing through the books would create the ideal petri dish in
which to hatch the most deadly outbreak of the novovirus known to
humankind!**** he merely looked at me with his milky eyes and bleated, “you
know, this virus was probably on board before we got here.”
Well! I was dumbfounded. How did this have any relevance to our
conversation I pondered. Then, after no small amount of said pondering, I
realized that this shell of a human thought our “code red” procedures were
meant to punish him. “No,” I wanted to assure him, “while it’s true that I am
going to compose a delightful little sketch of this encounter in which, yes,
your foul ways shall be punished, locking the books away is actually done in
the hopes that by limiting the places where your dirty paws might mix and stir
the bacterial soup we can end this period of heightened vigilance and return to
our normal—sleepy—routine.” Of course, being the very epitome of tact*****, I
bit my manly tongue, muttered some bland platitude and allowed this unpneumatic
cadaver to shuffle away as proud as some kind of near-dead peacock.
But this strange outburst led me to glean that third reason of which I spoke. It
seems that these people seem to think that there is an adversarial aspect to
hygiene. We—the crew of the Pequod that is—are doing our best to put controls on
the passengers, controls that need to be subverted and struggled against it
seems. Keep raging against the dying of the light my wrinkled brethren!
*No, the novovirus is not as dreaded as the Dread Pirate Dewey.
**I didn’t “actually” hear this.
***Perhaps I should, at this point, tell you, dearest readers, what a
“code red” means to the life of a humble shipboard librarian. Well, all of the
books in the library are locked up at night behind shutters. Part of my morning
duties is to open said shutters, but during code red they remain closed and
people have to request books that I then fetch like the dog I am. I also have
to wash all the pieces to the scrabble games that are ever so popular. And hand
out the daily sudoku to people. It’s a lot of fun.
****Maybe I used less colourful language.
*****A guest who heard this exchange came up to me afterward to
congratulate me on dealing so well with the angry man and told me, “tact is
making someone feel at home even when you wish they were.” Thank you ma’am.
