My CoviDiary 3/19/2020; Hands

3/19/2020

Ten days ago, I tweeted “Prediction: Within the next 48 hours, Trump will start referring to COVID as ‘The Wuhan Virus’. Despite charges of scapegoating and fear-mongering, he will absolutely refuse to back down from it, claiming it is descriptive, not racist, as he did when calling Warren “Pocahantus.” I was wrong on the exact term and the time frame, but at this point, having test ballooned it with a few of his vile little cronies, Trump is referring to the Coronavirus exclusively as “The Chinese Virus.” When asked by a member of the press (rhetorically, one assumes) if that wasn’t just a tad racist, Trump put on that slack, scowly look he thinks is what serious leaders look like when they are seriously leading and responded… that’s where it’s from. Not racist. Descriptive. So I’m giving myself a ten out of ten for being fucking Nostrodamus, cause that’s how grading works. You grade your own performance. Just like back in school when you’d hand in a test and tell the teacher “That’s another 100 for me, because I answered all the questions correctly.” I don’t know why some people find school hard.

There’s been some buzz among the cognoscente that one should not take this bait, just continue to question the grotesquely combed-over Creamsicle bully on the facts of just how he’s handling this crisis, because his racism is an intentional distraction. Let me just say that as a multi-faceted, complex human being, I am perfectly capable of hating Trump for constantly asserting his God given right to be the kind of racist little bitch people used to know better than to be in public WITHOUT it distracting me.

The entire matter makes me angry and depressed, so let’s instead examine

THE STATE OF MY HANDS.

Full disclosure. For much of my life, I have not been as dedicated to the practice of hand washing as I ought to be. I don’t mean I’ve never washed them, but that I ought to have washed them more and in some sort of systematic, regular way, instead of mostly when they visibly had stuff on them. I sincerely apologize for having been disgusting, and I assure you, I am reformed. I understand research reveals my gender is generally unscrupulous in the hand washing department and that an appalling majority of us are… lax? Hygienically? Regarding hands? Which is bad, since that is mostly what one touches things with?

That changed around Thanksgiving, maybe a bit later, when one or another of my family came down with the thirteen or fourteenth cold and or flu of the season and all of my coworkers were engaged in a round robin of sneezing, hacking, and nose blowing. It’s hard to remember in light of where we are now, but people were pretty frequently sick with the garden variety winter malaise this winter before we began our descent into the poorly written dystopian screenplay we are now inhabiting.

Miraculously, I got the seasonal gripe only once, and not that badly, but when my bride came down with the flu (just the flu) mere days after recovering from a severe cold, I embarked on an aggressive hand washing regimen, so that by the time near constant hand washing became the national pass-time, I’d already been at it for a few months.

What song do you sing to yourself to ensure you’ve lathered for an efficacious amount of time? If you could listen in on my thoughts (and I am often consumed with fear that many of you can and do, as I am mildly delusional, anxious and paranoid) you might think I was singing “The Alphabet Song” to myself, and you would be not just wrong, but insulting. I am, if nothing else, enigmatic. If you think for only a moment you will realize that “The Alphabet Song” is simply a set of lyrics rudely imposed upon the tune “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” Not sophisticated enough for you? Then let me inform you that those are NOT the lyrics I hear in my mind’s ear, preferring the parodic “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little BAT”, lines given to the Mad Hatter by Lewis Carroll AKA the REVEREND CHARLES DODGSON! Perhaps you remain unimpressed by my little matroyshka doll of trivia, but we have yet to hatch the innermost, tiniest trivia doll, because DID YOU KNOW that the tune shared by “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”, “The Alphabet Song” and for that matter “Baa-Baa Black Sheep” was written by none other than WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART?! And did you furthermore know that bit of trivia ISN’T ACTUALLY TRUE AT ALL?!

It’s an old French folk song titled “Oh! Shall I tell you, Mommy?” Put that in your trivia pipe. What Mozart did was take the well known tune and write twelve variations of progressive complexity on it, which was the sort of thing genius types do when screwing around musically. And one of those variations (I’ve no idea which one) is the one I sing in my head whilst washing my hands to ensure I have scrubbed for at least twenty seconds. Why? Because I… am… a sophisticate.

All of which is a very roundabout way to let you know I’ve been washing my hands a lot for months now after having only washed them sporadically for most of my life and they result is that they now LOOK LIKE SHIT AND HURT.

Honestly. I want to say they look like my grandmother’s hands, but that would be too kind. What they look like is two slightly palsied Iguanas that used to be quite fat but suddenly lost a catastrophic amount of weight. The skin of my hands is dry, loose, furrowed, pruney, criss-crossed by an uncountable array of fine lines that frequently and inexplicably turn a chalky white, and CRACKED around the knuckles which under the current circumstances SCARES THE CRAP OUT OF ME.

Do not ask me if I moisturize. Of course I do, although I have until recently mostly thought of deliberate moisturization to be the effete province of the sort of person who might be mistaken for the protagonist in Thomas Mann’s immortal “Death in Venice” (SOPHISTICATE, must I remind you?! Apparently so.) I have not yet hit on a moisturizer entirely to my liking. “Gold Bond Healing Cream” is far too greasy and far from healing, causes my hands to itch. “Suave” offers temporary soothing relief, but in an hour my hands are once again a pair of withered lizards.

And now I am too sad and demoralized to continue. So let us leave it there. For now. Put a pin in it, stigmatize my horrid, autumnal leaf hands. They’ll come up again soon enough now I’ve laid the groundwork.