I'm warning you right now: Do NOT read this column. It contains information that YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW! If you read it anyway, that's on you. I don't want to hear the complaints. On the other hand, if you seek proof that ignorance is relative bliss, read on.

My wife, Rosie, whom I love dearly — in spite of everything — is a dietitian. She has an MS — a master's degree in the science of food. This column has nothing to do with that. And consider yourself fortunate.

You do not want to know the details of how a cute little calf ends up as a slab of overpriced, undercooked, bacteria-infested veal on your plate in your favorite restaurant. The saga of vegetables — especially in an era when the Food and Drug Administration is scientifically challenged — is not as bloody, but every bit as distastefully scatological and potentially lethal.

Still, this column has nothing to do with any of that. I only mention it to introduce the fact that my wife reads health-related newsletters and frequently throws out apparently random facts in bed. Some of these facts may be enough to make you sick, even if you didn't order the veal tonight — or a side salad which could be equally mortiferous (mort meaning death, ferous meaning carrying or bringing).

For example, "Better Report" told Rosie, and Rosie told me, that each of us — you included — sheds some 500 million skin cells a day. Five hundred million — half a billion! It's amazing you have time to do anything else. You chuck these all over the house, all over the office, all over everywhere you go. You also spend about one-third of your time in bed, though you probably aren't lucky enough to sleep nearly that much. So a huge amount of those 500 million cells end up in your bed. Each and every day. These millions of cells mix with the hair, the drool and what that newsletter insists is the 16 to 24 ounces of sweat you sweat every night. All that then fuses with the grime and the microbes on your sheets — making your bed kind of a Disneyland for bacteria.

The point of the "Better Report" piece was to get people to wash their sheets more often. The point of my wife reading me all this was to get me to do the same. She wants to wash the sheets approximately every 20 minutes. She claims I'd be perfectly comfortable with every 20 years. I like clean sheets. And I have no problem washing the sheets.

What I dislike is making our bed, which is the approximate size and weight of New Jersey. The contour sheets are just small enough, smaller than the mattress, that they can only be crammed onto it with a rope and pulley system, then strapped in place with some mechanism that only Rosie can operate. I assume it's one of those pieces of wisdom passed down from mother to daughter through the generations. And it's all reminiscent of what the Egyptians used to build the pyramids. (Note: the Egyptians did it with slaves, not husbands.)

The point is, it's a difficult and painful process. Not one to be entered into lightly. Certainly not simply to alleviate an allegedly unclean situation so minor that the theoretical dirt and effluvia can barely be detected. A stray visitor could never smell anything from across the room. Almost never, anyway. And what are they doing in our bedroom anyway? At that point, they pretty much deserve whatever they get.

Rosie's "Better Report" recommends washing your sheets every one to two weeks. They claim the average is about three and a half weeks. How they know that, I have no idea. My guess is no married man is allowed to enjoy his bed in peace — happily wallowing in his own putrescence — for anywhere near three consecutive weeks.

By the way, "Better Report" also insists you're supposed to wash your pillows. Not just the pillowcases, your pillows. When's the last time you washed your pillows? Me neither.

Check out Barry Maher's dark humor supernatural thriller, "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon" on Amazon. Sign up for his Substack at www.barrymaher.com.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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