OurThoughts MOORE ON LIFE BY CINDY MOORE
Untouchables Untouchables We’re in a new phase of living now. It’s called the “don’t touch era.” No-no’s include: any door handles or knobs; elevator buttons; bank pens; touchscreens for ordering; credit card machine buttons; shopping cart handles…basically anything that involves the use of your fingers or hands should be avoided. What this all means is that unless you bind your arms behind your back straightjacket style and can float outdoors a good ten feet above this vat-of-virus we call Earth, you should stay home and bingewatch Netflix while ordering through DoorDash for the remainder of your life. Things are complicated. In the old days, circa February, a person greeted another with a charming little custom known as the “hand shake”. This quaint old tradition involved human contact. A person would extend their hand and interlock it with the hand of another person. While grasping one another they would then move the hands together in a coordinated up down movement. 12 | OUR TOWN | AUGUST 2020
Aww, our silly forefathers and their dangerous disease-spreading rituals. Today we are much wiser and sophisticated when greeting a person, such as when I recently met my friend for a social-distancing lunch. Me waving from six feet away: “Hi Fiona. How’s it going?” Fiona: “Sorry you must have me confused with someone else. I’m Wanda.” “Oopsie, my mistake. From this distance all I can see above your mask is your eyes and they look like my neighbor’s. Oh, there’s Fiona.” (I recognized her because after the virus hit, she never got out of her pajamas.) “Hi neighbor,” she said as we approached one another cautiously. She extended her hand in a fist bump, but I already bent my arm to do an elbow nudge. She immediately pointed her elbow to follow suit, but in the meantime I have made a fist to bump her fist. We were thoroughly confused. I extended my hand to shake. She declined. We both knew that
wasn’t right. Then she jutted out a hip in an attempt to bump butts, but in the confusion I lifted my hand to high five. She smiled and we smacked our hands together slapping flesh to flesh. “Uh oh!” Fiona’s eyes grew wide as softballs. My jaw dropped in disbelief. “Corona!” we shrieked out in unison then rummaged in our purses for hand sanitizer and squirted great gobs onto our palms and arms and tongues. We decided to FaceTime each other from home over a cold tuna sandwich.
Cindy Moore is the mother of three superlative kids, servant of two self-indulgent felines and wife to one nifty husband. Her ficticious occupation? Archeological Humorist: someone who unearths absurdity and hilarity in strange and unusual places including public restrooms, the lint filter, and church meetings. Most recently, she excavated a find in her neighbor’s bird feeder.
