before or after?

remember this joke from the negotiator?
a marine and an army guy went to the loo together. the marine finished his business and walked away without washing his hands. the army guy made fun of him by saying that in the army, they were taught to was their hands after going to the loo. the marine retorted with, "in the marines, we are taught not to pee on our hands".

well, the thing is, we're all taught to wash our hands after going to the washroom. the reason being that our hands are probably dirty after, and we shouldn't be spreading the germs and bacteria everywhere, worse of all keeping them on our hands and possibly handling food later.
(why anyone wouldn't wash their hands first before handling food is totally beyond me.)

my question is, why only after?

it's general knowledge that our fingers and nails collect the most bacteria. we handle food, we type on our keyboard (which probably hasn't been thoroughly cleaned since the day we bought it), we scratch our itches and probably the worse of all, we handle money. money is said to be among the dirtiest thing that we handle a lot on a daily basis.

so, imagine you touching your privates when you go to the toilet. wouldn't you be directly spreading said germs and bacteria directly to your 'valuables'?

then there are those guys who like to flush the urinal as soon as they stand in front of it, so that they can flush it again when they're done. (what's the deal with that anyway?) i guarantee you, the last guy that did that probably didn't wash his hands before doing his business either. so you're like sticking his germs on your finger, then sticking your finger to you family jewels. (hhmmm... can i make it any grosser?)

then there those who wash their hands afterwards, but never wipe their hands dry. it's common sense that wet/damp hands spread more germs. (don't believe me? check out the links at the end of this entry) why wash your hands when you're gonna be doing more damage than not washing them?

i'm not a hygiene freak. it's just that it's pretty weird to not wash one's hands only after but not before, seeing that our hands are already gathering germs all day long.

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