The Five-Second Rule

You look forward to biting in to one of the chocolate truffles sitting on the silver platter.  You wait patiently through the last speaker of the evening. Coffee is being served.  Finally the platter with the truffles comes along.  You select your favorite one.  The server leaves.  As you lift the truffle toward your mouth, it falls to the ground.  No one saw.  Do you pick it up?  Does the five-second rule apply?

Over the years, I have dropped my share of food.  Sometimes there is an abundance of the food dropped, so I think nothing of tossing it in the trash and taking a new one.  But what if the fallen food was not available in abundance?  Does it depend on how clean the ground is?  Does the type of food factor in? 

People often joke about the five-second rule.  I know very well that it is not a ‘rule’ but rather an excuse to feel okay about eating something that has touched the ground’s surface.  I thought it would be interesting to ask a variety of people what they thought about the five-second rule.  Here’s what they had to say:

Cancer Survivor:  I believe in the ten-second rule. We need a little dirt in order to build our immune system.

Middle School Student:  It depends. If it’s at home five-second rule applies but anywhere else it's gross.

Science/Health Educator:  I say false.  Not safe to pick up.

Doctor:  In regards to five-second rule false and can be gross depending on what it falls on!

English Teacher:  I spent time growing up in Africa, so I don’t worry about some dirt here and there.  Depending on the food, if I can brush off a little dirt, it doesn’t bother me. 

Senior Citizen: I do not follow the five-second rule. Five seconds does not seem like a long time, but how LONG do you think it takes?   What if you have a dog or cat?   What if they carried something on their paws? What if you stepped on something outside, like a bug, or anything.    Would you really like to still put something in your mouth "five seconds" later?  Not me.

Musician: The only validity to this I think is that five seconds doesn’t allow enough time:

-to get grossed out  

-for other people to see you transfer it from floor to plate

-for the dog, cat or whatever to interfere

The decision to pick it up probably depends a lot on a person’s perception of how dirty the surface is. I’m sure the food picks up germs; it’s just a question of how many and what type.

Twenty-Something: Depends on the food!   And the condition of the floor.  An Oreo on the living room carpet?  Sixty-second rule, no problem.  Cupcake face down on the sidewalk?  Not even one second.

New Mother: Well, at the beginning, I thought gross, incomprehensible, but now...I have seen too much at daycare to pitch a fit every time. I try to intervene, but if I am not in time, I don't sweat it much. Of course, each time I try to logically explain that it is not sanitary, but the meaning is loss on an 18 month old. It also depends where we are when it happens...

I guess I fall in the middle.  I have brushed off food that fell on what I considered a ‘clean’ floor and ingested it.  Nothing happened to me.  Then again, if it falls outside, I don’t consider eating it at all, ever.  And, as the twenty-something person said, cupcakes…never!

So what are your thoughts on the five-second rule? 

How Important are Photos?

I love photography.  Not only do I consider myself an amateur photographer, but I am also the one that can usually be found at parties and events snapping away.  I love to share the photos with others.  I also print them and put them in albums that we enjoy looking through from time to time.  But there does exist the dilemma of finding the right balance between documenting memories and not missing the fun of the moment because you are so preoccupied with getting the shot.

When we have taken family vacations with our boys in the past, we seemed to find a decent balance between taking photos of the scenery and including us in some of the photos.  Looking back in albums, we can reminisce about where we were and what we did.  For about a decade when we shot slide film, we would enjoy fun family nights looking at slides of our adventures.  Sometimes we use the photos to help answer questions like, “How old were the boys when we went to Montana?”  If we can’t remember, we just look at the picture and figure it out.  I couldn’t imagine taking a vacation without a camera.  For me, that is part of the fun of the vacation.

We have photos of all the holidays and important milestones too, including birthdays and graduations. It is at our most recent (and last) college graduation this past weekend that this topic came up.  It was very important to me to ‘document’ the milestone of our younger son in his cap and gown with family and if possible with some of his friends too.  The graduation venue was large, the ceremony long (the largest graduating class in the history of the school), and the weather drizzly when we exited the building.  What was on many minds was getting away from the throng and scoring something to eat.  In the end, everyone was a pretty good sport about indulging me with my photos, but I wish I could have taken more and with better backgrounds.  

To throw me off even more than the rushed photo session was the fact that there was no cap to go with the gown.  Why?  Well, if you have been to a graduation ceremony before, the last thing many students do after moving the tassel from one side of their cap to the other is to toss them in the air.  Yup, ours was somewhere back on the arena floor and it got scooped up right away.   So the few photos I did get had gown but no cap.

I must say that those few photos did capture the essence of the moment, albeit sans cap and with random strangers in the background.  But in that moment I was struggling to be in the moment without ‘worrying’ about the missing cap and getting the event documented.  I know that I wanted to be able to look back at the event as my memory fades years from now, but I also wanted our son to be able to have these photos at a time in the future when he might be looking for them.  Perhaps that future time and situation was a bit too abstract for him right now though.       

Looking back at my milestones, even coming from a family where photography is in our genes, I don’t have photos of every event.  I don’t know why exactly.   Did I not always cooperate with my parents about taking my photo with my friends when I got older?  I really don’t remember.  What I do know is that I wish I had more photos of some events, including my graduations.  I don’t know if that is why I was so intent on getting this past weekend's graduation day documented.  

I don’t know how to explain it, but having photos is part of the event for me, part of the memory.  I just have to remember that photos don’t necessarily hold the same importance for everyone else though. 

Wouldn't you want to remember Annie Lenox, Willie Nelson, and Carole King at your graduation and shaking their hands?

One, two, three!  There goes the cap! 

Who needs photos or a cap?  C'mon, we're hungry!

 

Well, to my delight, we borrowed a stranger's cap for this photo and probably won't remember this fact in 25 years, but it sure made me happy.

What's Negotiable?

Three years ago, I was in the parking lot at school, wiping snow off my windshield.  An announcement came over the loudspeaker that my son was on the phone.  With one son in Montreal and the other in Boston, I figured it must be an emergency if either was asking to page me after school hours.

I also remember there was snow on the ground and it was still falling hard and fast.  Several of us arranged to follow each other to the highway to go the ‘long way’ home to avoid a very steep hill on our end of town known as ‘Pope’s Corner’.  I asked them to wait and not start the caravan without me.  I dashed inside to see what was up.

It was our younger son who had apparently began looking for his first college apartment.  With six months left until sophomore year began, I didn’t realize he had started looking.  I’ll cut to the chase and say that the conversation was something like, ‘Mom we found a great apartment and we need $20,000 but my portion is only $5,000 because there are four of us.  This apartment will be gone if we don’t commit.’

Of course scam went through my mind right away.  $20,000?  Right away?  The apartment would go fast?  He went on to explain that he and three friends found a four bed, two-bath apartment, which was big, perfect, safe, and walking distance to school.   He explained that they each had to put up $5,000 to cover first month, last month, security, and fee. Doing the math you can figure out that this perfect apartment was running $5,000 per month.  For students!  Can you say Back Bay, Boston?

My mind went back to the present and the snow falling outside.  I explained that I would have to call him back when I made it home, which would not be my usual seven-minute drive, but to count on 45.  When I did finally walk in the house, there were three messages on the answering machine, each sounding more desperate than the other to please call him back when I got in.

I found out that the rush was that they were still in the apartment with the broker waiting for me to give a ‘go’ signal.  I explained that we had not budgeted that much for rent … it was very expensive … couldn’t they keep looking … they still had six months.  I was also not aware of any fees associated with rentals.  Granted my only experiences with renting was in New York, California, and in Montreal for our other son.  I made it clear that I was not going to pay a fee when they could find an apartment on their own.  I asked to speak to the broker, as I was a little annoyed with the pressure tactic being used on these 19-year olds. 

Poor guy.  I grilled him and asked him if charging fees was even legal.  He assured me ‘mam’ that it was how things were done in Boston and was perfectly legal.  I assured him back that my son was not going to be renting an apartment that involved fees.  I then asked him to put my son back on the phone.

What transpired next broke my heart, and it was truly sincere.  ‘Of course you are right mom…I’m sorry…this is too much…you and dad have already done so much for me…I’ll figure something out…’ 

Well, now I started to feel bad.  I wasn’t concerned about the loss of this particular apartment but didn’t want to jeopardize the roommate situation.  Apparently money was not issue to them.  

After hanging up, I called a few other rental agencies around Boston and found out that indeed ‘…many rentals are handled by agencies that sometimes pass the fee on to the renter.’  When pressed to explain what sometimes means, I was told that for September rentals, the fee is passed on to the renter but the landlord generally pays it for leases beginning in the other months.  So, reading between the lines, that means that many landlords are adding an additional burden to college students, the ones who start leases in September.  Well, this just made me madder.  If landlords could afford to absorb the fees the rest of the year, they could certainly absorb it for September rentals too.  Like college isn’t expensive enough!

We talked more that night and I offered a compromise.  “Tell you what,” I began.  “If you can get rid of the fee, somehow dad and I will figure out a way to pay that rental amount.”

He didn’t see how he could make $5,000 go away.  I broke it down that his portion of the $5,000 was $1,250 and that a $3,750 finders fee was a nice day’s work for the broker.  Basically he would have to have the broker, who knew I was not going to pay a fee, agree to a reduced fee.  Our son said the fee was non-negotiable; I told him everything was negotiable.  I reminded him how we learned to haggle at markets in Europe.  He pointed out that going from 20 euros to 15 euros was easier than making $1,250 go away.  I agreed, but that was my offer.  If he really wanted that apartment, he was going to have to work for it and make it work.

The next day we got a phone call that the broker agreed to the reduced fee and that they were going over to sign the contract.  I asked if his other friends were okay with the ‘fee deal’.  He said they were a little annoyed but okay with it.  (I thought that they might be annoyed that they hadn’t thought of it.)

A good lesson learned; everything is negotiable. 

P.S. – I have since learned and understand all about brokers’ fees.  I don’t mean to put down the way they make their living.  This is just one story of our introduction to fees and our subsequent philosophy of searching for apartments on your own.