North to Alaska

The Infamous Elbow Bump!

As bird flu heads our way health officials are starting to sit up and take notice. Some are suggesting that the friendly handshake must go. Our hands are carriers for all kinds of germs. People sneeze into them. People use them to cover their mouths when they cough. And people use them to pick up all kinds of things that are just oozing with germs. Yuck! And then they want to shake your hand. Back in 1918 during the height of the Spanish Flu outbreak, Prescott, Arizona, actually banned handshaking. Rome, Italy also banned handshaking in 1928. They claimed it was unsanitary. Of course they made an exception for all the good folks who wished to kiss the pope’s ring. Today doctors who head to Africa have already implemented their own ban on handshaking. They have replaced our traditional greeting with the elbow bump, a simple touching of the elbows.
The elbow bump would just be the beginning. Imagine a world with no hand to hand contact. Kids would no longer be allowed to say, “Gimme five! Up high! Down low!” Lonely bachelors would be spurned on the spot if they got down on their knees and tried to grasp a fair maiden’s hand in order to prepare themselves to pop the big question. “What are you doing? Trying to give me the bird flu?” Beer vendors at sporting events would be hard hit. Imagine trying to entice someone to take a cold one from his hand and then pass it on to the person sitting beside you who is trying to avoid making eye contact and is pretending that you are just a hologram. I just returned from a cruise and the captain refused to shake the passengers’ hands. He had posted a sign saying “Forget it!” Maybe he was just an ornery cuss. I did tell him that I had used some of the ship’s hand sanitizer, but he just smiled. Maybe he knew the stuff was not effective. Which reminds me that the one finger salute would still be permitted.
Banning hand contact with other people could have far reaching consequences for our society. The days when Miss Scarlet could say “I am so dee-light-eed to meet you!” and hold out her hand to be kissed would be over. To be certain there are already many members of our society today who share Rhett’s sentiment, “Frankly I don’t give a damn!” Baseball, the national pastime, would have to forget about steroids and become super diligent in enforcing its ban on the old spit ball—after all we can’t have the catcher taking a quick gander at the ball in his glove and saving “Oh, yuck!’ Everyone in the ballpark might bolt for the exit. Anyone who can still get pumped up hearing the Beatles sing “I want to hold yourrr hand” had better have a plan to deflate himself. If someone says, “put her there,” you might need to be a little suspicious of his intent. Las Vegas would go down the tubes since all the one-armed bandits in the casinos would have to be outlawed. Politicians just might be the biggest losers of all. In their quest for votes they seem compelled to press the flesh. Maybe there are other areas of the body they could press. Whoops! Sorry! I understand that many of them already do that. A good rule would have to be your hands in your pocket—your own. That would certainly leave the politicians out in the cold.
There are some innovative new ideas being tossed about as effective ways to control the virus. Start with kids. They are the most efficient germ spreaders in our country today. As I write this many are already being trained to sneeze into the crooks of their elbows. The greeters at Wally World could be pressed into service as our first line of defense. Instead of just saying ,”How are you?” they would actually look at your hands to see how you are: no clean hands—no admittance! At Mickey D’s the playground gatekeepers could confiscate all the toys from the Happy Meals if the munchkins should try to slip back inside without washing their hands.
There are many things that we can learn from the past. I understand that paper cups were introduced back in 1918 to help cope with the Spanish flu. Today we are already being forced to drink through straws when we eat out because our new improved dishwashers can’t get the lipstick off the glasses. Whenever someone sneezes in a public place, we could whip out a can of Lysol and spray the place. It might not stop the flu, but the smell sure would clean out the place in a hurry. Courtesy facemasks proved effective in curtailing the SARS outbreak in China. Here, however, health officials bemoan the fact that we don’t live in a culture that would voluntarily don courtesy masks. They might need to be reminded of incidental contact back in Austria in WWI. Women were pressed into service as streetcar conductors to help compensate for the shortage of men who were off fighting some dinky little war. The lady folks could get no respect. None that is until they started jabbing the unruly passengers with their long hat pins. Hatpins can command a lot of respect—even today. Then there is all that duct tape left over from Homeland Security hysteria. Just line your room with plastic sheeting and seal yourself in with duct tape. But why stop there? We have tons and tons of those unused Homeland Security booklets just lying around collecting dust. Why not stamp on the covers: How to Prevent Bird Flu? That would surely prompt the good citizens to don their courtesy mask. Now you can sleep soundly and not worry about the bird flu.