Recently, I’ve been self-diagnosed with a chronic and progressive disease. No worries, it’s not fatal — as long as I “treat it” correctly.

I’m 100-percent positive it’s not sexually transmitted. I am pretty sure it’s genetic. It started several years ago with my head.

The first symptoms were the decorative pillows.

Apparently, my head, and only my head, got the pillows “greasy.” When the decorative pillows are on the bed, my head can’t be there.

The Bear and the dog often nap together on those decorative pillows, but we all know it’s only me that brings the dirt.

Lately, it’s gotten worse. The diagnoses spread to Tucson.

“All your pillows in Tucson are gray,” the Bear said. “That’s from your head…”

Of course it has nothing to do with the age of the pillows. We took all the old pillows from our house in Gilbert down to the man cave in Tucson when I moved there for work (10 years ago). Since then she has bought two new sets of pillows in Gilbert — but clearly the problem is me.

Conditional face

Frequently, I get allergy attacks in the morning. Instead of doping myself into bloody noses to stop a few sneezes, I just wash my face until the nasal cytokine storms fade.

But I can’t do that in the hall bathroom anymore.

“Those are decorative towels,” the wife said. “Only guests can use those.”

Actually, that’s not even true. When we have guests, she replaces the “decorative towels” with almost identical looking towels that my father or my brother can use.

But my face is banned from that bathroom due to my condition.

In the last few weeks, I learned there are special towels — in the kitchen.

I’ve been doing dishes for more than half a century. But I just learned I’ve been doing them wrong. I’ve been grabbing the towels hanging off the handle on the oven. I needed towels to dry the pots and pans — that’s where the towels were.

“Those towels match the decor,” the Bear said. “Just reach into the drawer.”

I honestly can’t tell the difference.

Sometimes the red towels on in the drawer, sometimes hanging from the oven. Sometimes they are white. They all have the same thickness and are the same size.

My grubby fingers have been ruining them all.

It’s all in the genes

As soon as it hit my fingers, I knew this condition was genetic. My father is the king of grubby fingers. Everything he touches and wears gets just a thin layer of dirt or stains.

All of his pants have spots. All of his shirts should be replaced. With the covid-19, my sister and I take him new masks each week because he won’t throw away the ones with the brown stains.

“He’s just like a little pig pen,” my sister said. “There’s always a small cloud of dirt that seems to follow him, and even at 90-years old, he has grubby little fingers.”

As I listened I knew. I have it too. Manis PigPenus is the condition (I just made up) where grown ass men can’t touch anything without covering it with some odd color or random dirt.

Manis PigPenus is obviously progressive and chronic. MP cannot be cured. It can only be managed.

As long as I remember I can’t touch anything, it won’t be fatal — at least the odds are better The Bear won’t kill me in my sleep — where my grubby fingers are ruining the sheets and my dirty head is destroying all the pillows.