Things that make you go EWWWW

When you have a health editor in the office, there are certain things you learn not to do when she's around. Like eat cantaloupe.

I purchased some fruit salad the other day and mentioned to my coworkers that it was marked down. Faster than you could say "expiry date", Gail Johnson pointed out that it is a little known fact that you can actually get salmonella from poorly cleaned cantaloupe.

In the blink of a well-trained eye, she researched the topic and e-mailed me some information: bacteria, which can cultivate on the rind, can transfer to the flesh upon cutting. The fruit needs to be refrigerated promptly, and you should never eat already-cut cantaloupe if it has been sitting out on the counter for longer than a couple of hours. (But if you could see all the moldy, fermenting, and growing-and-starting-to-walk gunk that accumulates in our staff fridge, there's a lot more to worry about than just cantaloupe!)

Actually, I'm not complaining at all. In fact, Gail's probably the one complaining about me and the rest of the staff members constantly talking to her about our ailments.

Like how I'm constantly pulling some muscle I didn't even know I had in yoga. Or how music editor Mike Usinger constantly shows her the weird red bump on his foot. (Gail diagnosed it as a bunion, but I just thought it was a giant zit.)

We joked that we should post daily blogs with photos (and commentary) of how that bump is progressing, along with assistant art director Janet McDonald’s sty on her eye. It's gotten really big. We're worried that it might end up growing and turning into a second head and taking over her life, just like the 1989 British movie How to Get Ahead in Advertising (get "a head" . Get it?).

She's had to hold a hot compress on her eye every night ever since. In addition, she also wears a night guard to prevent damaging her teeth as a result of her grinding while she sleeps.

We were all just chatting about it, and we discovered that several other people use night guards too. Hey, is this a new fashion trend? And it turns out our Time Out editor Steve Newton also has a sty on his eye too!

And another staff member has a third nipple! (No one's actually seen it, which has led some to believe it's an urban myth circulating in the office.) This is getting interesting! And it’s so exciting I feel like throwing up!

Anyway, getting back on track, I have to say that Gail was on a roll there with a series of stories about things that make you feel really squeamish and make you want to go shower, like bed bugs and coliform counts.

My sister had a bed bug infestation when she bought a second-hand antique bed. She hates the thought of mosquitos flying around in her room at night so you can imagine how grossed out she was by the bed bugs. When I started to get a bunch of bites on my wrist (and I don't have any pets), I was so freaked out it was a bed bug infestation too (conveniently, it happened around the same time Gail was writing about those annoying pests).

You know, when they report that the coliform counts are low and say that it's safe to go swimming, I always think "But even if it's low, that means that there's STILL fecal matter in the water!"

Gross.

Okay, I have to go think about something else now before I push myself over the edge. (I'm sure Gail will have some advice about maintaining your mental health threshold after this.)

Got a third leg? (No, not that appendage.) Send in a comment!