5-Second Rules

What seems like a childish game is actually a complicated theory governed by many, many important subrules.

That Dropped Doughnut: How Soon, and How Often, Will It Come Back Up?

The beauty of the five-second rule is that it is utterly pliable and that it is not about food so much as it is about yearning and disgust and gastronomic history and evolutionary wiring and the implicit social contract we make when we break (and drop) bread with other human beings.

Following the rule requires understanding its intricacies. "I would never eat a pickle," says Anaiah Grissom, 9, "not even after one second." She also would not eat a hot dog, a burger or a piece of broccoli, because those get dirty really fast. A Chips Ahoy, according to Anaiah, can last up to 15 seconds, and Pop-Tarts, like, never get dirty.

Indoor floors are better than outdoors, but grass is better than carpet.

The tastier the treat, the longer it can be left on the floor. Cake tastes better than cookies, though, and gets germy before cookies. You can almost never use the five-second rule on cake. Parents will, however, employ it on any foodstuff with a high per-pound price. You pick that up and eat it! You know how much that cost?

If you spend your last dollar on something, the germs will give you a break and leave it alone for an extra 10 seconds, or until you can pick it back up.

Ew. I would NEVER eat anything that fell on a public floor. In my germ-averse life, the 5-second rule is downgraded to three seconds. That extra 2 seconds may as well equal rolling one's food in a vacuum cleaner bag that's just been used to hoover up a barn floor.

To while away the hours at the bus stop, my sister and I used to engage in gross-out fantasies wherein we upped the ante on licking various vile substances off a sidewalk. The points of negotiation centered on duration of tongue-to-substance vs. ingestion of said substance and access to Coke and/or an ambulance. Coke loomed large in these negotiations as it's a well-known fact that Coke will remove all traces of anything on Earth. Ambulances? Eh. 911's a Joke.

[Photo: Meret Oppenheim's Surrealist misstresspiece "Object."]

Comments

[Justin Watt]

Ha, this is great. I happened to find myself reading the rather crappy Five-second rule article on Wikipedia just the other day.

[David]

City life is one way; backpacking is another. In the great outdoors one copes. What's more disturbing than a bug on trail food is a server's fingers on the rim of a cup.

[ae]

Justin, I've read that article! Ha. I loved reading the kids' rules in this one, too.

It's true, David. I would much rather accidentally drop my food on a nature trail than in a cafeteria. As the kids in the article say, "God made dirt, and dirt don't hurt." Ha.