Now, I’ve openly admitted my Monkishness. At this very moment, there is a bottle of Purell hand sanitizer on my desk next to my monitor. So it should be no surprise that I can get a little grossed out by my keyboard and mouse.

Everybody’s mouse and keyboard get a little gross from time to time. If you still have a ball style mouse, you know that you have to pop it open now and then and scrape the crud off of the wheels inside. (You DO clean your mouse, DON’t YOU?!) Once in a while, while I’m applying sanitizer to my hands, I’ll run my hands across the keys on my keyboard hoping that I’ll kill at least some of the nastiness on the surface of the keys. But when I catch a glimpse of the dust and crumbs underneath, or even worse, when there’s some kind of gook building up on the side of a key, I just get grossed out.

Well, it turns out that my freakish phobia is justified! Yes! You keyboard is a death trap after all. I was RIGHT!

According to this article posted on Slashdot, a Swedish magazine commissioned a study of the average computer keyboard. They found 33,000 bacteria per square centimeter. I repeat: 33,000 bacteria PER KEY!! Just to put that into perspective, the average toilet seat has about 130 bacteria per square centimeter. That means that the “J” key upon which your index finger is currently resting probably has two hundred and fifty times more bacteria on it as the same surface area of the toilet seat on which your little brother pees every day.

Think about that the next time you lick that little bit of french-fry salt off that same finger tip!!

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go soak my fingers in undiluted bleach until they turn pasty white and wrinkly.