Mark — Thanks for the heads-up. Your story is just one more reason I feel comfortable in my antipathy for leaving my home or conversing personally with homo sapiens.

More seriously, as long-time readers may recall, I have mild germophobia when it comes to such things as public restrooms. In particular, I hate being forced to touch door handles in public bathrooms. That’s one reason why I like the design of many airport bathrooms because there are no doors to touch. Only very basic maze-like entrances which maintain privacy by obscuring the line of site into bathrooms.

(When you think about it, this set up is a bit silly. It’s not really an issue for women’s bathrooms since they have no urinals. And men who want to peep on men peeing — or worse — can just go on in to the bathroom and take in the grandeur. Just ask Larry Craig. Meanwhile, I don’t think there’s more than one woman in a million that has any interest in rubbernecking that.)

Anyway, I was heartened that on the latest NRO cruise my germophobia was confirmed. On our Holland America ship signs were posted by every bathroom door asking patrons to open the bathroom door with a hand towel so as to not touch it. I’ve been ahead of the curve for years.

Bonus: While researching this post, I discovered that I’ve made 40 blog entires with the word “bathroom” in them. That’s more than one third of all Corner posts with the word bathroom in them. What do I win?