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When I was 15, I went over to a friend's house and we found a dead mouse that had sufficated under a garbage sack in the garage.  My friend held it up by the tail and said, “Aw, isn't it cute?  C'mon, pet it!”

This was a girl I'd recently become friends with, and I really liked her, and I didn't want to wimp out in front of her, so I said, “Uh, okay,” and briefly stroked the mouse's back with one finger.  (I made sure to wash my hands well right after that.)

My friend then laid the dead mouse on a piece of toilet paper on her sister's bed and wrote, “Kiss me!” on the toilet paper.

That night at home I watched Outbreak (1995) with my siblings.  There had been a hantavirus outbreak a few years back, which had been a big deal in the news and was still on the public consciousness.  It was just my imagination, but as we watched this movie about a deadly virus, I could feel my lungs turning into jelly.