Monday, March 9, 2020

Courting Coronavirus: Eleven Recently Observed Methods

(1) Use your finger to push the button opening the tram door. With that very same finger, rub your eye or scratch your nose.
(2) Forget that you have a perfectly good elbow for turning on light switches, punching elevator buttons, and even opening tram doors. Take the finger already guilty of touching unsanitized surfaces, the one with which you also rubbed your nose, and boink the elevator button--then, for good measure, use it on the copier everyone else uses.
(3) Don't use gloves or hand sanitizer.
(4) Hear someone sneeze a row ahead of you? Turn your head languidly in their direction; absorb the sneeze as you would spring rain.
(5) Grab the pole in the tram/subway/bus. Then let go and, with the same hand that just grasped that pole, absent-mindedly rub your nose/cheek/mouth/eyes. While you're at it, and in tandem with the cough you've just heard in the next row, yawn. Bask in droplets from that cough.
(6) Don't wash your hands.
(7) When your kid calls to tell his music/sports/ballet/afternoon activity of your choice/teacher to say he's got a bad cold and has to cancel, say: "In case you have Corona virus, please don't list me as one of your contacts, because I want to go on vacation next week."
(8) Shake hands with everybody, as usual. Laugh when they squirt on hand sanitizer. Shrug amiably and rub your chin, right below your lip, with the same hand.
(9) Someone three feet away on the train platform sniffles, sneezes, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. Fail to notice him because you're texting someone. Walk toward the sound of the sneeze. 
(10) Enthusiastically hug each and every one of your friends.  
(11) If you get the chance, shake hands with POTUS, the way all those Republicans were doing, the ones among the group known to be exposed to someone who was sick. Share the love.

P.S. I can scratch my nose with my shoulder. Yay, me.

3 comments:

  1. Amusing, as ever! We just returned from France last night. Huge crowds in Charles de Gaulle and a jam-packed plane -- Americans scrambling to get home. People a row up from us cut short their African safari after the POTUS announcement of shutting off travel from Europe. Even though there's no ban on Americans coming back, one guy said, "I'm afraid he might change his mind."

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  2. The safari people had connected through Paris.

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  3. Wow. Glad you're home safe. GORGEOUS photos!!

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