The Shart of The Matter

72% of shopping carts tested positive for fecal matter according to a report from Faux News. In fact, shopping carts are dirtier than public bathrooms. No small achievement based on what I’ve seen go down in women’s restrooms up and down the east coast. I Snoped it because Faux News makes stories up all the time and 72% seemed like a lowball number. I mean, we’ve all been to Walmart, right?

I thought about this 72% fecal matter today as I drove home from the grocery store. I had a particularly nasty cart with some kind of unidentified brown sticky stuff all over the handle. Was it baby barf? Perhaps it was fruit juice? Personally I’d prefer the baby barf because I’m allergic to fruit but whatever it was it was a sticky germ trap for all the feces on all the hands that came before mine.

I thought about this as I drove home, eating Cheetos and sucking the orange “cheese” dust off my fingers and out from under my nails. My fingers and nails that had just manhandled a nasty, shit laden shopping cart around a grocery store for 30 minutes. For a second, just a second, I was like “OH MY GOD! I just sucked somebody’s shit off my fingers!” But then I thought about all the times in my 38 years that I’ve had shit in my mouth in some form or another and I’m a pretty fucking healthy person. I think I’ve used hand sanitizer all of 3 times in my life and only because some germaphobe made me use it. But let’s go back to the fact that I’ve had shit in my mouth. Numerous times.

Back in high school I was sitting outside with my friends between classes and a bird crapped in my mouth. A bird. Shit. In my mouth. That was the last time I laughed freely under an open sky. How many points do you think that bird got? I’ll bet he got all the birdy ladies after that hole in one.

During college I interned at a zoo. ‘Nuff said. Maybe not if you’re not familiar with animal husbandry so let me explain. I worked in the African Plains area of the zoo. Think elephants, giraffes, zebras, bongos, cheetahs. I spent my mornings shoveling hundreds of pounds of elephant shit into wheelbarrows, up a ramp and into the back of a dump truck. Then we’d drive the dump truck to the other side of the zoo, dump the shit out, climb into the back of the truck and clean out the shit that didn’t fall out on its own. Then we’d go to lunch. I cannot tell you the number of times I’d pull my sandwich out of its baggy, get halfway through it, see my filthy shit covered hands holding the delicate white bread, think “Meh, too late now” and keep eating. I feel confident saying there’s been elephant shit in my mouth.

And let’s not forget about the time the monkey threw hot, fresh shit in my face while I was cleaning the enclosure. Sure it was a tiny Cotton Top Tamarin with a green Mohawk but his aim was true. So true.

Crazy eats copious amounts of crap. She prefers it soft serve direct from the factory but will eat it day old too. We don’t let Crazy kiss us but she’s got that Ninja Tongue action going on and sometimes you’ll be talking or laughing and SLURP!! Open mouth, insert Crazy tongue.

Are we keeping track? Bird, elephant, monkey, dog. Considering the number of times I’ve ripped open a bag of Cheetos on the way home from the supermarket I think it’s probably safe to add human to that list. 

So I’m driving home from the supermarket, sucking orange “cheese” off my fingers that were already sticky from the mystery goo on the shopping cart, thinking about that fact that 72% (minimum) of shopping carts are coated in shit and the fact that I’ve inadvertently eaten a lot of shit over the years and I thought “Whelp. Nothing I can do about that now” and kept eating the precious Cheetos and sucking on my fingers.