#1142 Slick Observation

People sometimes ask me where I get my ideas. My answer is, ideas are laying around ready for the pickin’. It just comes down to being observant. Noticing those things other folks don’t and then exploring their ramifications.
You need to be a little bit Groucho Marx and a little bit Sherlock Holmes. Like the other day. Using my Sherlock Holmes skills, I noticed this individual coming up to talk to me was both socially conscious and had a very bad cold or flu. How could I tell?
The inside of the elbow of his sport coat was slick and shiny. Yep, he was an elbow sneezer. From Ebenezer Scrooge to the Elbow Sneezer Gooze ‘tis the season for the flues.
He was socially conscious because health officials tell us not to sneeze into our hands, as we then use our hands to shake hands with others or to touch common surfaces. You transfer your bugs to your hands, your hands transfer them to someone else or something else that someone else touches and voila, someone else gets the bug.
This chain of events works even if you have a plastic glove on your hand. I noticed a restaurant cook sneezing in to his plastic-gloved hand the other day and then going right back to handling food. I’m not sure he understood which side of the plastic glove is protecting whom.
But the sneeze into your elbow thing is a good step, as most people don’t shake elbows or handle salad bar tongs with their elbows.
It’s killing the heck out of our square-dancers though.
Another thing I noticed the other day that concerned me, but defied my detection skills. This guy was walking along by a park with an empty poo bag.
But he had no dog with him.
I wondered what he was doing. Was he looking for a strange dog to then follow and pick up his poo? A proactive poo picker upper?
Did he have a dog and it got loose? Leaving him holding the bag, so to speak.
Or was he going off into the woods for personal reasons?
Sometimes it’s good to not get ideas...
America, ya gotta love it.