This might be a good time to bone up on our sense of hygiene–or rather our lack of it. Since the whole world is talking about Ebola, I thought we might want to start thinking about the need to be more hygienic to prevent diseases in general.I suppose we could start with men getting the message that the road is not their toilet. Don't urinate on the side of the road. While you're at it, don't spit on the road either. It's uncouth to say the least.
Once we get that concept down, maybe we could go on to the importance of washing hands. It just so happens that I grew up with a mother who decided to prepare us all to be surgeons. I remember the ritual for washing hands before we ate. If we came to the kitchen and touched the back of our chairs before we sat down, we had to go to wash our hands again. We walked from the bathroom to the kitchen with our hands up in the air like surgeons.
And if you're wondering how long you should wash your hands to kill germs, I hear that my mom told my 54-year-old-brother the other day that singing two choruses of Happy Birthday are a sufficient amount of time to wash your hands. Granted, my mom was a bit extreme, but we sure didn't get runny noses like other kids in school. Everyone needs to be more aware of germs and more vigilant about washing their hands–especially people who handle food.
If I am buying food, and the cashier touches the food, or hands food to a customer without washing her hands first, I walk away. Once I remember telling a woman in a food place that she came just in the door and she didn't wash her hands before she touched food."I washed my hands when I came from the bathroom," she said.The bathroom was outside, about a mile from the restaurant. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
While I was thinking how to answer her, she barked, "Yuh want the food or not?""No," I said, and walked away. I never went back to that food place. It didn't take long for it to go under.In hindsight I should have said, "Do you know how many people with dirty hands have touched the door that you just touched before you touched food?"But I didn't think that fast.In my book, the door handles to any public place should be wiped down with alcohol about once every ten minutes.
While we're on the subject of washing hands, I would also like you to know that in my mom's house, you could not touch your hair, face, arm or clothes once you washed your hands.I can't tell you how many times I have seen people in food places scratching their head or committing any one of those violations while touching food. This always evokes a healthy sense of nostalgia in me.
When I was 16, I worked in a Howard Johnson's cafeteria, and we had Spotters who kept an eye on us. They were spies disguised as ordinary customers. If Spotters saw us touch money and then touch food or touch any part of our bodies and then touch the food, they calmly walked to the back door, produced a company ID and demanded our jobs.
We knew what hygiene was, and we were glad–not only for our jobs but also for the knowledge to serve our customers in the best way possible. We knew we worked in the service industry and we felt proud of it.Oh, and at Howard Johnson's, we had to wear aprons that we had to change several times a day. We also had to wear hairnets. We would have been horrified if someone had found a hair in his food, and we certainly knew that we couldn't have kept our job if that happened.
Moving right along...Whatever happened to keeping children home from school when their noses are running and they're coughing down the place?That concept seems to be long gone. There was a time–at least where I grew up–that people considered it the proper thing to do. It was rude to send your kid to school if the kid was hacking.
Sometimes I think we're too busy studying subjects in school to think about what really matters in life, like good health and kind consideration–or even standing up for a principle, like good hygiene.I can't tell you the number of times I have been ridiculed or abused in public for kindly asking someone to follow some basic hygiene. You would have thought I was insulting a food worker with my request.I am guessing in this age of Ebola, maybe I don't look like such a fool any more.