Flu scare has us all a bit on edge

I don't know how to tell you this, but if we meet somewhere, let's agree not to shake hands.

Just bow or give me a nod or the Vulcan sign or whatever and keep on moving. Maybe we can do an air high-five on the run.

Don't even think about coming in for one of those manly hand-shake-and-half-hug combos that have become the rage.

No offense. It's not that I don't like you — unless you're that guy who gave me the half-peace sign on the freeway last week — but I don't like your germs.

The HIN1 — the germ formerly known as "flu" — has made a lot of people germaphobes. Moi, for instance.

Give me another week, and I'll turn into Howard Hughes. I'll be carrying tissues in my hand to open doors and locking myself in hotel rooms for a year. I'm already flushing public toilets with my foot, and I open restroom doors like a cop making a drug bust — I kick open the door and run through the opening like Usain Bolt.

On the list of things I try to avoid, the flu ranks at the top, way ahead of reality shows and door-to-door salesmen. Frankly, if we can get right to the nitty gritty here, I would rather have all 10 toenails ripped off with a pair of pliers than barf.

I take no chances these days. If someone in the room sneezes or coughs, I treat them like a ticking bomb — I hold my breath and back away slowly.

The symptoms of swine flu are fever, cough, runny nose, body aches, headaches, sore throat, chills and fatigue, vomiting and diarrhea.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

So no thanks to hand shakes. Remember the study that was done a few years ago that revealed 25 percent of men and 10 percent of women don't bother washing up after doing their business in public restrooms? Their hands were bacteria colonies. And this was before the pig flu showed up.

I propose that we end the great American tradition of the handshake. I happened to mention this to a woman named Lynne VanKomen, a patient service rep in a doctor's office in Sandy. "Funny you should say that," she said, and then explained that there is an LDS Church stake in Salt Lake Valley that has banned the shaking of hands in foyers and chapels for the next six months.

"They told them to bump elbows instead," Lynne said.

Why didn't I think of that?

At the office where Lynne works, there is a sign on the front door asking people with flu symptoms to wear a mask and sanitize their hands before they touch the doorknob.

That doesn't go far enough. Why not just hose them down in the doorway?