Childhood

Childhood

Another Time

In the days of my childhood, kids were repeatedly told, “Don’t put that in your mouth! You don’t where it’s been”. It was to me, one of life’s hardest choices. Either listen to my mother’s stern voice or ignore her and pick up the unwrapped candy lying in the middle of the sidewalk. The candy beckoned, “Pick me up, eat me, I’m yummy.”. A glance up into my mother’s unflinching eyes and the dilemma was resolved. Not on my life am I disobeying her. The candy stays where it is.

A few short decades later and suddenly there is a five or ten-second rule, depending on who is in charge. In that timeframe, it is quite acceptable to pick up dropped food, brush it off, and pop it into one’s mouth. Is the ground now cleaner? Do people’s shoes still not drag around every type of unimaginable disgustingness from chewed gum to excrement? Yet the contradiction exists when you visit someone’s home. It is still considered an act of respect to remove your footwear at the door. It is also a way to keep things sanitary, by not traipsing around the entire house dragging whatever may be embedded in the grooved soles of your sneakers. Even with these provisos in effect, you still are not invited to eat off of the floor. Dropped food to me is to be picked up only to be thrown into the trash. Period.

Then there were the admonitions not to put anything up your nose. No pennies, beads, beans, or even your own finger. That was always followed by horror stories about so-and-so or your sister perhaps who dared do such a thing. Enough detail would be provided of the removal of the said foreign object to discourage you from following your sibling’s example. How she was rushed to the doctor’s office, crying in pain. The doctor then took out, in my mind long, tapered metal forceps, in reality, tweezers and they would be pushed up your nose to extract the stuck object. Then the tweezers would grasp the intrusion, and twist and pull until it was loosened, then yank it from your nose. All with no help from Novocain. Don’t expect any sympathy either for your foolishness. The description was severe enough to leave any child cringing, while unconsciously caressing their nose as if to say, “I will never let them do this to you.”.

I echo my mother’s voice throughout my life, her warnings deeply ingrained in me. I pass the same wisdom on to my son and in turn to my grandchildren. For those I am not allowed to correct, I silently wince when they race the dog for the tidbit fallen to the floor.

A few short years later and cleanliness is in vogue. Everybody’s germ phobias are in overdrive. Even the idea of placing your fingers near the vicinity of your mouth or nose is suddenly taboo. There is endless hand cleaning, countertops are disinfected, alcohol wipes are within reach at all times to sanitize every imaginable surface. Your eyes constantly water from the odors of the harsh cleaners, your hands in constant need of lotion from the multiple daily twenty-second hand scrubbing. Your surroundings sparkle, but you dare not touch anything. No one is allowed in your home to admire your hard work, lest they carry the dreaded disease, COVID.

Heaven forbid you suspect you have the Coronavirus, now the nightmare of testing begins. There are a couple of ways to go about this. There is the six-inch swab to be inserted into your mouth or the six-inch swab to be inserted into your nose. Thankfully, the Q-tip-like poker is sealed and kept in a sterile plastic covering. Further instructions follow. Insert the swab into your throat, all the way back to your tonsils. You will know when you are doing it correctly, as it will activate your gag reflex. Move the swab back and forth to get a sample from both of your tonsils. Carefully remove the swab, break off the long stem, as it seemingly was only needed to gag you, then insert the used portion of the swab into the vial provided.

The second option still involves using the six-inch swab, but this time you insert it into your nose. You need to keep pushing the swab further into the nose until it meets resistance, then angle it toward the ear. With the swab as far up the nose as it will go, you now need to twist it around in a circle. Do this for five to ten seconds. Remove the swab, you guessed it, put it up the other nostril, and repeat. As per the first procedure, you now break off the excess stem of the swab and insert the cottony part into the vial provided.

Tears fall from my eyes, not only from the invasive testing but of the lost opportunities in my childhood. All those glistening candies calling to me from the floor, to pick them up, enjoy them. The missed chances of being the class clown by sticking pencils up my nose. Possibly I was born at the wrong time, a time when medical professionals would never validate inserting objects into my facial openings. Perish that niggling, trifling thought, maybe mothers weren’t always right.