Doorknobs and Shopping Carts

sweater on door knob

Presently we are in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Being over 60, Mike and I are considered at risk, and Mike with his heart condition is a high risk. Just about everything on our calendar has been cancelled, including a wedding which is being postponed until next year!

At first, people’s reactions to the warnings of the epidemic seemed like overkill – at both extremes. Either there were precautions like cancelling events into late summer and folks hoarding at the supermarkets, or people were going about life (life is a cabaret!) as if nothing terrible was approaching at all. Mike and I were more like the latter group, still going out to eat, Mike working, my regular storytelling stints. Over the course of the last two weeks, however, our social life slowed, and by Sunday, it had evaporated. Mike still goes to and from work, stopping at the QT for coffee and gas, the bagel shop for better coffee and breakfast, but the rest of his life is strictly housebound. All of my events are gone. We’ve been eating at home and contemplating all the chores we could get done for the duration.

There was one appointment I was able to keep on Monday morning, though – my scheduled annual mammogram! Yep, that is how exciting life has gotten. And after that I snuck in a trip to the Kroger supermarket. I was hoping to get turkey and trimmings, pot roast fixings, and eggs. There were the empty shelves typical everywhere as have been in the news. This morning the meat selection was low, including the packaged lunch-meats! I could have gotten an 18-pound frozen turkey and I gave it a lot of thought but decided no. There were plenty of eggs, and if I’m not mistaken, they were on sale at a good price! No crazy people, no hoarding that I could see. So, it was a calm stroll through Kroger, filling my cart slowly but surely.

blazer on doorknob

Then I noticed something that took brought back a memory from long ago. I was pushing my cart with my right hand only – which I have done ever since I realized my fitbit was not counting my steps if my left hand was on the shopping cart (the fitbit, and now my Apple watch, being on my left arm) – on this morning, however, my sweater sleeve was covering my hand on the cart! Usually I wipe the cart handle with the wipes the stores have been providing for a while now, but since corona has descended, the wipes are gone – all gone. So instinctively, I pulled my sweater sleeve over my hand, wiping the cart handle while holding on and pushing and essentially keeping my skin away from a surface that many other people have touched.

And this reminded me of one of my former bosses from back in the ‘70’s. Back then, when approaching a closed door, he would put his hand in his coat pocket – sports coat, blazer, jacket, suit coat, whatever – and with hand in pocket, he’d reach for the door and turn the knob to open! If anyone asked, he would say he was avoiding the bad stuff – germs, antigens, carcinogens, poisons, on the doorknobs!

We thought it was kind of silly, and yet, four decades later, more and more of us are approaching doors, and shopping carts, and more, the same way that he once did! He likely still does too. Come to think of it, my old boss will be turning 80 this year, and as far as I know, he’s in good health, and none of those doorknob bad things ever took him down!

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