Dirty Money

There are some things that I don't mind an occasional "active worry" over.

"Active worry" items include:

• Dwindling glaciers
• Ebbing respect for the written word
• Age-ism (especially now that I'm aging)
• Right-wing talk show hosts taking over the world
• Having to be intubated at some point in my life

And, most important, the overall health and happiness of my family and friends.

I have an even longer list of things - ranging from the cosmic to the personal/pedestrian -  that I refuse to worry about (even though they occasionally make best efforts to creep into my waking thoughts). A sampling:

• The Large Hadron Collider sucking Planet Earth into a black hole
• Finding shoes that fit (a bigger deal than you might imagine)
• Getting mowed down by some a-hole driver who's texting
• A giant asteroid striking Cape Cod Bay
• Having to return to my long-ago career in waitressing
• Whether Sister Marie Leo was actually right about anything
• Getting Psycho-stabbed in the shower
• Tom Cruise attaining public office
• Catching something from a public toilet seat

Since there are only so many hours in the day in which to actively worry and/or push niggling little fear-factor thoughts out of my brain, I actually don't want to have to add to either list.

So I was decidedly non-thrilled to see a CNN headline stating that 90% of the paper money currently in circulating contains traces of cocaine.

Great.

All I need to add to either list is the possibility of someone grabbing my Vera Bradley wallet so they can cadge a bit of blow from the few miserable dollar bills in there.

Since I could not, of course, avoid reading the full article, it served me right to find out that, in Boston, it's not 90% of paper money. It's 100%. (Orlando is also on the list of 100-percenters. A bit more magic in the Magic Kingdom?)

This doesn't mean that every dollar out there is involved in the drug trade. It just means that enough of them are to contaminate ATM and cash-counting machines which, Typhoid Mary style, infect innocent by-stander dollars. (While you won't get a contact high from the coke-and-a-smile greenbacks, if you handled a lot of money, you could end up failing a drug test.  I guess we can add throwing a buck in the Salvation Army bucket to the list of things - like eating a poppy-seed bagel - not to do when applying for a new job.)

Not content to scare us with the heady news about cocaine-infused money, CNN had to include a bit of warning on the general unsanitary nature of money:

For years, health agencies have advised people to wash their hands after touching cash for sanitary reasons. Disease-causing organisms such as staphylococcus aureus and pneumonia-causing bacteria have been detected in paper bills. According to a 2002 study published in the Southern Medical Journal, 94 percent of the tested bills had potentially disease-causing organisms.

I actually have no recall of any health agency advising some Lady Macbeth-ing every time we opened our pocketbooks.

And, in truth, I believe that I have been able to maintain my robust, nary a cold, good health in part because I get out and about, exposing myself to all sorts of germ vectors, and because I am not crazy-obsessive about hand washing. (Not that I don't wash my hands....)

Anyway, I guess we can forget the ubiquitous water bottle. We're all going to end up humping gallon-jugs of Purell around on our backs. Not to mention the Gumbometers* that, at the rate we're going, we'll no doubt be issued before too long.

Also in the CNN headline list contained the one on the cocaine-tinged money was one that said Tom DeLay was going to be on Dancing with the Stars.

That one I didn't click through on.

Tom DeLay on Dancing with the Stars...

Whaddaya think? I've got nothing to do all day but fret, fret, fret.

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*A Gumbometer was what Gumby had to wear when he went out so that he wouldn't melt.  Mother Gumby was always reminding him "don't forget your Gumbometer."