A Conquering Celebration “There will be a hot time in the old town tonight.”
by Marilyn A. Pellini
T
hat will be the feeling on the eve following the eradication of this horrific virus. We should be able to finally leave our homes totally unencumbered, mask and gloves hopefully no longer needed. Wearing those may be a habit hard to break, however. We’ve become obsessed with germs — though, admittedly, frequent handwashing is probably a habit we should carry forward. One time when I was teaching, I asked my class if they’d like to conduct a little experiment with the other fourthgrade room to see if we could reduce the number of kids who got sick during the school year and had to stay home to recuperate. In our classroom, we were fortunate to have a sink. This was before those push bottles of liquid soap became readily available, but I made sure there was a bar of soap in a soap dish available at all times, and I even
26 | The Brick Magazine
Photo by Brooke Lark
scrubbed the sink daily. I instructed my students to keep our plan secret from the other fourth-grade group. The other teacher (who was not at all a germaphobe like I was, being an asthmatic) would not alter the usual routine in her classroom. My fourth-graders always washed their hands after using the lavatory or after a cough or sneeze, and certainly before lunch and after recess and gym. We washed the desktops every Friday afternoon and all of the tables and counters in the room with soap and water before our weekend break. Both teachers kept track of the number of excuses that were written by parents for their child’s illness. There was a marked difference in the health of my students versus the other classroom. I have a feeling that my kids carried this idea that handwashing could prevent much sickness forward into the rest of their lives.
