Saturday a week ago I went to Menards warehouse store in Dickinson, North Dakota.  On the way into the store, I grabbed a shopping cart because I was expecting to buy more items than I could hold and carry in my hands.

I pushed the shopping cart all around the store, and it turned out that I didn’t buy very much after all.  When I went to one of the check-out lines to pay for what I bought, I used the debit card reader and key pad to pay.

I walked out to my vehicle in the parking lot and I tried to decide where I wanted to go to eat.  I drove to the El Puricutan Mexican restaurant, but it was closed.  I then drove to the King Buffet Chinese restaurant instead.  This led to me becoming sick for more than a week.

It wasn’t the food at the King Buffet restaurant that made me sick, it was all of the things that I had done.  When I went to Menards and handled the shopping cart and the debit card reader, and then later went to the King Buffet and handled the entry door handle and the food serving spoons, I had not washed my hands or used hand-sanitizer before I ate.

So many people go through Menards and the King Buffet restaurant every day, and some of them are sick.  They may be just beginning to get the flu, or just getting over the flu, but covering their own mouth or nose when they cough or sneeze, or using a Kleenex to blow their nose, and then shortly thereafter grabbing a shopping cart handle or an entry door handle, is what spreads the flu.

I noticed thirty years ago, that I could feel perfectly fine while at home, being around very few people.  Then after going to the grocery store and returning home, I would quickly become sicker and sicker.  I had picked up a virus from something that I had touched at the store, like an entry door handle, a shopping cart handle, a check-out line conveyor, or cash bills.