Top 10 Ways to Tell If You are a Mysophobe (Germaphobe)

The scenario: you're leaving the house and, right as you get in your car and start the engine, you realize you've forgotten that little packet of sanitizing wipes or the bottle of hand sanitizer!

It is your only chance of salvation away from home, and you thus treat such items like gold.

Once inside, they go straight to that shoe shelf in the garage (or somewhere similar). You can't stand the idea of tracking dirt or who knows what else inside your house, which is meant to be an area of calmness and unwinding from the day.

You then mutter to yourself that at least you don't have to spend the next hour or so mopping the floor.

This is true for me. It helps that my shoes genuinely are pretty dirty most of the time.

You're right about this. Overall, it's prudent to be cautious because it is indeed a jungle out there (with props to Randy Newman). New pathogens are being imported through illegal immigration and common carrier air travel. Most people are totally clueless when it comes to practical protections against infection. Because of this, if, God forbid, we should face some lethal potential pandemic, we're toast.

It's the place you go to get tested and checked for hosting any germs or pathogens, and yet also where you could catch many of those germs in the first place.

You might try your best to schedule every appointment as early as possible, to avoid contracting germs from a larger crowd.

You wince, unable to keep yourself from thinking: why in the world couldn't they have at least covered their nose?! Due to heightened alertness, you might also be that one person who can distinguish the cough of a sick person from that of someone who's just choking -- and yet regard the worst more often, just to be safe.

It's like going into a zone that's been quarantined for radiation. You are completely unnerved by the smell as you start to comprehend how many people have been in there.

As you spend the first couple of minutes lining the toilet seat with tissue, you wish that you'd invested in a gas mask just for these kinds of trips.

Finally, the one person who you are absolutely free to complain to about how ridiculous it is that the supermarket did not have any antibacterial hand soaps, along with the long list of unusual things you have noticed being mysophobic.

Not to mention, you don't quite feel like the odd one out as much anymore.

Two words: flu season. Whatever you can do to delay that appointment until springtime -- to avoid the echoes of throaty coughs and spreading germs -- you will be sure to do it.

And if it's not a changeable date, you arm yourself with sanitizing packets and bottles as though a soldier going into battle.

Your speculation might not actually be the case, but you can't help but wonder whilst conversing with someone. It's almost like you've mentally become Sherlock Holmes: pondering the origins of that hair strand atop the left shoulder, observing the state of those slightly scuffed-up shoes.

It's a quirkiness that acts almost like a conscience.

You've worked so hard to avoid falling prey to those irksome germs -- adopting a cautious demeanor whenever your health is jeopardized -- yet somehow it's all been undone.

With every passing day, your mental questionnaires on what could have gone wrong also become more frequent.