Wake up and smell the incense

I am the opposite of a hypochondriac, whatever that is. Same goes for my husband. We may be suffering from delusions of immortality, the thing is we ignore pains and symptoms until we literally can't function, we don’t bother visiting physicians at all, we can safely watch House and Grey’s Anatomy without shouting "I have that!", and happily embraced a “I must be ok 'cause my heart's still beating” philosophy.

Maybe this explains why I was dumbfounded when last Sunday in church my fellow parishioners refused to share the sign of peace. The woman in front of me, hands firmly anchored to the back of a bench, turned and spit out “Peace be with you” in such a way that if I were deaf I would have thought she told me to go to hell. When my husband stretched out his hand to the man behind him, the guy withdrew in disgust.

Later that day I learned that, over swine flu fears, various Archdioceses around the country invited parishioners to refrain from taking Holy Communion from the chalice and sharing the sign of peace to avoid close contact with others.

Three reasons why I think things are being blown out of proportion:

1) There have been 12 fatalities of swine flu in the US. Considering that there are over 300 million Americans, my fellow parishioner’s chance of catching the flu by shaking my hand is 0.04 in a million.

2) Dear fellow parishioner, are you a germ freak? If you live in the city, then sorry, you signed up for this filth. A germ-free New York is like, say, a noodle-free Shanghai. This city is a goulash of bacteria. You may avoid my hand at church, open the church door with elbows, punch the elevator buttons with knuckles, carry wet wipes to disinfect the bench, and in the end you take the subway, used by 7 million people daily. Seven million people eating, spitting, scratching, touching their feet, rubbing their noses, picking up bacteria and then leaving it on that handrail, on the change, in the gym… Yes, that reminds me, if you work out at Crunch Fitness in Midtown, then be aware that a spot check of health clubs revealed that your gym has fecal bacteria hanging around the water fountain.

Now my favorite: no one knows how many rats live in the city, but the estimates are anywhere from one to 10 rats per person, which in the best case scenario adds up to a quarter of a million ratti norvegici, i.e. the species living in the city that, incidentally, has been known to gnaw on concrete. In addition, they seem unlikely to pack up and move to Jersey any time soon. In a study recently conducted by the University of Tel Aviv, researchers developed mini models of city layouts to see what type of city a rat could easily navigate its way through. The finding: rats prefer New York City over New Orleans and Jerusalem.

The problem had gotten so bad over the last decades that in 2000 the city hosted the first Rat Summit, cosponsored by the Daily News and Columbia University. Mayor Giuliani was represented by Joseph J. Lhota, his top deputy mayor, who presided over a rat control task force of health and sanitation officials and whose office door at the City Hall had a sign reading ''The Rat Czar: Allied Command Headquarters.''

In an effort to keep up the good work, last year the health department created a rat map available on their website which is billed as “a one-stop resource website for New Yorkers' rat prevention needs." (Fascinating. Where would Abraham Marlow and his school of psychology place “New Yorkers' rat prevention needs” in the hierarchy of human needs?).

3) Last but not least, the sign of peace is a gesture intended to communicate that the peace of Christ extends to the unity of the church and of all humanity. It recalls the passage from Matthew 5:23-24 about being reconciled with your brother before presenting your offering at the altar. After all, aren’t you, my fellow parishioner, and I both going to church because we believe in a blue-eyed Jew who, on a hill near Rosh Pina, said love thy neighbor, and that bastard of your enemy too? And correct me if I’m wrong, but when the leper went to Jesus and said “If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean”, Jesus DID NOT ask “Wait a minute, did you wash your hands?”