Cleanliness is next to…

This is the latest in a series of random thoughts while being holed up during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How much hand sanitizer does it take to kill one’s credit card?

I have no idea, but I’m convinced that before this pandemic is through, I will find out.

I’m trying to stay in as much as possible, but there are a few odds and ends that need getting and I am the designated forager for our house.

If it’s at the grocery store, I’ll use the debit card if I’m the only one touching it. Then I sanitize the buttons before I put in my pin and my hands after. However, If I have to give a card to someone to process a payment, then I use a credit card I have for emergencies. As soon as they hand it back, I slather it in sanitizer. That’s why I use the credit card — if the chemicals in the card get messed up I can order another one. The debit card is much more useful, and I don’t want to have to go anywhere and get it replaced.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who is so used to the smell of sanitizer on my hands that gave myself a squirt the other morning just because I couldn’t smell it and it and that bothered me.

Ah, OCD, my constant friend. I’m sure it will take me ages after the pandemic to wean myself off of the sanitizer. The struggle is real.

This is the part where the non-believers will point to the media overhyping the coronavirus, or that it’s a Democratic plot. Yes, I teach media. Yes, I tend to be progressive in my politics. But I also have something going for me that they don’t — I’m not an idiot.

I see people posting about going family gatherings with old people, without a thought about the danger they are putting them in. My parents are thankfully still alive — and I’d like it to stay that way — so I won’t visit them (admittedly, they live on a different continent so it’s easy to avoid them, but still).

My natural obsessive worrying helps me with social distancing. I’m not worried about myself, I worry about unintentionally passing it to someone I like (I don’t even want to be the source of infecting people I don’t like, although there are quite a few whose demise would be met by me with a disinterested shrug).

If someone I knew got sick I would wrack my brains trying to remember the last time I saw them and eventually convince myself that the time I waved to them across the bar six months ago gave it to them (hell, if I chose to go down that road I could probably convince myself the whole damn pandemic is somehow my fault).

So, I’ll just obsess over this blog or draw pictures or read books or try to figure out ways to teach students who hate online work — and, besides, are worrying about their own issues at home — instead of worrying that someone I know will get it (they will), someone I know will die (someone probably will), or that someone I love will die (the black spot that always lurks in the back of my mind).

Wash your hands.