Hands, washing hands

I have a complicated relationship with my hands.

They’re like cooped-up teenagers, fidgety things. 

Too often, they don’t know what to do.

They tend to go places, touch inanimate things, without much thought.

Knuckles get cracked a lot. I'm tactile, most happy when I'm fiddling with something, ripping up paper. I squeeze my oranges and my avocados before I buy them.

I'm Italian. I even talk with my hands. I touch my food before it goes into my mouth, from bananas to hard-boiled eggs, which irks my wife to no end.

I'm nervous. Fingernails get bitten to the quick.

I recall my late mother’s protests when I was young (and even later). 

“John!” she’d say. “Stop biting!”

A dear friend, a professional manicurist, winces when she sees my jagged, gnawed-away fingernails..

She wants to help me, like a nurse spotting a dying patient.

But my hands are beyond help.

My wife will not consume anything I’ve touched. 

During that rare moment when I’m in the kitchen, preparing some dish, I don’t offer up some morsel from my recipe. There is no, “Here honey, taste this.”

Oh no. Not in our house.

“I don’t know where those hands have been," she'll say.

And I can’t remember either.

The first thing I hear when I walk out of the bathroom or open the refrigerator is the same tiresome question:

"Did you wash your hands?"

So this hygiene regimen brought on by the COVID-19 scare has been a particularly personal challenge.

Every moment of every day, I now realize, my continued wellness depends on making sure my hands behave themselves.

I am a parent imposing a new regimen, a parole officer keeping tabs.

By my hands don’t always listen.

They are lawless creatures.

Thugs.

There’s am instructional video online that demonstrates how to properly wash your hands in this new virus-obsessed world.

A dab of black ink is applied before the hands perform the motions we all do instinctively, one methodically massaging the other.

After a few passes, the hands stop — and you can clearly see where the ink has not spread, those places left unclean, where the virus could still lurk.

The hands then consciously attend to those places and -- voila! -- both are entirely black.

So, that's how it's done!

Even since the onset of the virus, hand-washing wisdom has evolved.

It’s no longer OK to just sing Happy Birthday twice. Time spent washing is important, of course, but so is technique.

Some people take this hygiene business to absurd extremes.

I know a woman, a neurotic germaphobe. who refuses to ride public buses.

“Dirty,” she says.

She flushes public toilets — and private ones — with her foot.

Men, on the other hand, are notoriously negligent in this area.

In the past, I’ve seen them in airport restrooms, believing a one-second splash of water — sans soap — will somehow do the trick before they hurry off to catch their flights.

But germs and viruses will not be so easily denied.

Years, ago, I read a story in Men’s Health magazine about germs.

It began:

Q. Where would you encounter more germs, licking the bottom of your shoe or kissing your dog on the lips?

A. Why do you think his breath smells so bad?

The article detailed the usual suspects of germ incubators.

Never use a restaurant toothpick that doesn’t come in a plastic wrapper

Never use someone else’s smartphone.

And never — and I repeat, never — sample the fare of those free nuts left at many bars. We’ve already discussed that many men don’t wash their hands after public bathroom visits, especially in bars.

Yep, that character on the next stool, digging his hands into your nut bowl.

Yikes.

One seeming result of COVID-19 pandemic will be a realization that good hygiene saves lives.

Hands, including mine, will have to be smarter.

They can no longer absentmindedly pick leaves from bushes during walks, drag along foreign surfaces, probe things, touch my face.

They will have to keep their hands to themselves.

I'm learning, and fast.

I now move through the world imagining those spiky little coronavirus blobs everywhere — hiding in plain sight, on door knobs, everything I once manhandled without flinching.

I even imagine them covering my own hands when I wash, which now can be a dozen times a day.

I will get those viral vermin, dammit, I will kill them.

I am now Mr. Hygiene. I will protect myself.

And finally, at long last, my hands are cooperating.

They must do as they're told.

Like obedient teenagers.