Germaphobia!!

Things I Love: Penguins, Disney musicals, unicorns and ballet.  All of which are also adored by small children.

Things I Hate: High-pitched noises, stickiness, germs and hunters.  All of which tend to coincide with small children, except maybe the hunting-- I've never talked to one long enough to find out.

This makes my life hard.  Any time I want to go to the zoo, or buy a Beauty and the Beast DVD,  I have to navigate through herds of ankle-biters, who seem determined to cough or smear jam all over me. 

Therefore, in order to have the best of both worlds, I have to resort to some pretty creative lying.  I once told a group of parents at the Chattanooga Aquarium that the penguins carried bird flu, and I'll swear, until the end of time, that I started the Baptist Church's Disney boycott, just to cut down on the lines at Disneyland. 

Truth: I've never been to Disneyland.  But I imagine it's full of sticky little noise-makers.

I'm not afraid of the children, per se, but I do hate the thought of catching a cold just because they haven't learned to cover their mouths, or getting jelly stains on my clothes because hand-washing hasn't been covered in preschool yet.  The anxiety worsens if my preemptive strike lie fails, and I'm in an enclosed space, like a staircase or cubicle.  Then, I'm forced to use creative diversions (read: lies) to escape. 

Until yesterday, I'd been amazingly subtle about it.  When necessary, I'd feign sudden onsets of food poisoning, misplaced keys and a myriad of other excuses, all of which conveniently allowed me to slip away from the predator. I once escaped a jam-encrusted munchkin by shouting, "OMG, I think I see James Franco!!!" and seizing the elevator for myself while its mother turned to look. 

That was a lie.  If I was going to rely on the banal, "Hey! Is that..." lie, I'd probably reference Miley Cyrus or iCarly, to ensure that the child was more distracted than its parent, thus granting me a little more breathing room.  Like I've said, I don't know any children, but I seriously doubt they spend their days watching Freaks and Geeks reruns. 

I digress.  My point is (was): until yesterday, no one caught my subtle maneuvers.  However, upon leaving Ripley's Aquarium (outdoor penguin exhibit!!), my mother and I headed to the parking garage at the same time as a toddler and its family.  We all drew toward the elevators at the same time, and initially, I thought it would be OK.  The child was on a leash, which its mother was wielding like a drawing-rein.  Unfortunately, I soon heard the sounds of doom. 

"Cough... sniffle... sneeze... slurp... coughcoughcoughcoughcough."  

An elevator's what, five feet by five feet?   And I'm convinced that little kid-germs are approximately 739 times more potent than adult germs, so when combined with the tight space... I can't even do that math.  I needed an escape lie, quick.  With no time to prepare, and without making eye contact with my marks, I had only one option:

"Cough hack sneeze hack cough hack."

Fight fire with fire, I guess.  Also, herein lies the hypocrisy of most exhausted parents.  They don't realize that their child is already infested with a myriad of microbes; however, they automatically detect any impending illness.  And sure enough, I saw the mother's shoulder's tense, as she tried to casually gauge the infection level of the girl behind her. 

I could almost hear my mother's eyes roll.  I waited for her to whisper the patented, "Ashlea Chase, that child will not hurt you.  Leave it be."  However, before she had the chance, she, too, heard the snuffles of impending doom, and burst out with,

"Aw, Ash, I thought you beat that cold! You're probably still running a fever, too!" 

And... win.  The mother-daughter lie is a blessed event, with a 95% success rate.  It also proved that despite her occasional grumblings for grandchildren, she finds children just as sticky and scary as I do, though it does make me wonder how she raised two children.

However, that is probably a question best left for the therapists.