Growing up as a kid at home, the message relayed repeatedly by mom was “Wash your hands well with soap”. In school, the nuns and teachers continued to relay this same message. It was the same with ‘look away and cough/sneeze in to your elbow’. It was also the same with using one’s own cups and water bottles and never to use another person’s cup or bottle or pick food from another kid’s lunchbox.
All these were considered simple acts of etiquette. I learnt that these acts were considered good manners and health habits to carry with me for life.
Well etiquette and all that relaying does fly out, when as kids we are with our buddies in school. We turn wild, crazy wanting to savour the snacks/drinks in each other’s lunch boxes and cups. We had to be one with our group. Trying to be invisible from supervising nuns on disciplinary checks was to be considered later, if we were found out to be doing just what they did not want us to be doing.
On my Girl Guide hikes and camps, I kid you not, the teacher in charges of us relayed these same messages, making us to stop and wash our hands, whenever there was a flowing stream on a hike route. At campfire night, we were supposed to take shower get into clean garb and show up. It’s not that we didn’t like being clean but rather we get into a world of our own whenever our buddies are there and then rules seem to slip away.
Today sitting socially distanced going on with my daily routine, my head is filled with these notes from the past. The voices of those nuns, teachers, and adults in family all giving that stoned piercing look that simply spelt “clean up” whenever I looked like I needed to be I had to appear’clean’ n their eyes.
Today we have the gamut of media constantly reminding us to clean up. In this age of fear and uncertainty each time I wash hands, sanitize or clean up, it’s not the electronic voices I hear, but it’s the those voices I heard as a kid at home, school and girl guide trips. COVID-19 or (let me re-christen it to) C-19 has for sure brought back many memories often linking them with something in the past.
When these pandemic influenced health practices were first introduced as “must do’s” it was such a strange thing to hear the simple act of washing hands to be repeatedly broadcast and encouraged over the media. There was even a timing that hands should be washed to the duration of singing ‘happy birthday’. There was even visual images published of the proper way of washing hands and clean up techniques.
I remember reading these literature hoping to find something new that I never knew about the art of cleaning up. Surprisingly there was nothing new all of it was a rewind and replay from the old school lesson board.
Never did I think that all of these simple acts I followed under supervising eyes, would turn out to be a modern religious ritual, to the extent of being considered a violation of the law, if not properly followed.
This pandemic is one of a kind, the lessons it has taught me are diverse and intense. To think a microscopic object invisible to the human eye succeeded in taking control of our lives in every way. It is making us do life’s simple things to save ourselves.
I think in a way if we consider this C-19 menace positively it would build our mental strength to the optimum. How we do this depends if we consider this as another challenge or a blessing in disguise.
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