Now wash your hands
If you know how, that is
Our 85-year-old neighbour was over last week for a birthday celebration here in house, and we were complimenting her on how well she’s still able to get around, and that she’s still pretty sharp in her marbles. “When you get old,” she said in her thick local dialect, “the trick is if you still know how to wipe your own arse.” Maria isn’t given to telling jokes, but she does occasionally make us laugh. Just like no. 2 did for me, below.
Now, if you don’t know how to wipe your own arse, I could give you a run-down of the techniques that I have deployed myself over the many years since my potty training was successfully completed (cum parental laude and a round of applause), but I think the majority of you would find that to be a tad TMI: too much information. As would be the whole matter of inner cleanliness (up to, but … not including, the soul) that preoccupies many of the members of what is loosely called the gay community. What should a poor boy do? It preoccupies many and yet there is as good as no literature on the matter (there is some, here). That is a sector of knowledge that is acquired more as a matter of trial and—oops!—error.
The thing is that, when we go out to the shops to buy what posh people these days call bathroom tissue, and what I still have a tendency to call bog roll, there is no indication on the outside wrapper of how you should in fact deploy it. No unroll in this direction, no recommended quantity to use per wipe, no government advice on how hard to press it against the … skin, no advised braking distance in order to avoid possible skid marks. When climate disaster began to loom, I tentatively suggested at one point, perhaps, using both sides of the paper, but this was an idea that got poo-pooed.
One thing that nobody in Belgium has any excuse for not knowing how to clean, is their hands. So, no matter what kind of a mess you get into when wiping your arse, ha, ha, ha, at least your hands can be germ-free providing you adhere to the instructions on the container.
Yes, for some years now, those who, like yours truly, read assiduously the advice written in minute typeface on the backs of their purchases have been able to learn, maybe even for the first time in their life, how to engage in the complex procedure known as washing their hands. I hate to paraphrase, lest some degree of miscomprehension creep into the delicate and devilish detail of this one manual process that has not yet been taken over by artificial intelligence, but I think I can safely summarise the procedure in my own words as follows:
wet your hands
apply some soap
rub hands together for 20 seconds (or, in a slow and deliberate fashion, say “one elephant, two elephant ...” until you get to “four elephant”; WARNING—this may vary according to the language you’re saying it in).
What is not, then, stated, and which I believe to be an essential part of the germ-eradication process, is to dry your hands (of course drying hands is not, technically, a part of the process of washing them—these tricky lawyers, eh?!). Drying is to be done on
a clean, dry drying-medium, such as a piece of absorbent paper (ensure it is properly disposed of in the appropriate, respectable receptacle, please),
a Terry-towelling towel (perhaps freshly laundered with that scintillating crisp, chemical-conditioner, fresh-linen aroma, giving you an urge to canter over a sunlit upland with a cheesy smile on your face) or
a super-charged hand-blower device (whose filter you have first carefully inspected for disease-vector bugs that just love the damp atmosphere of washrooms and the warmth of a blow drier).
Personally, I recommend donning latex gloves before approaching within intimate distance of any of your primary sexual organs (and, if you’re gay, considering carefully beforehand what exactly qualifies as your primary sexual organs).
The hand-washing instructions that have made their way onto soap containers in recent years come not from widespread industry concern that those who have been buying their products for the past 200-odd years might have been labouring under some onerous misapprehension as to how to actually use them. No, that is a concern not harboured by the soap industry, but rather by the legislature, so afeared they have become that the modern man suffers major lacunae in his knowledge of matters lavational. One might say, they need to tell us which finger to pick our noses with, and then how to wash that finger afterwards.
What soap bottles seem not so keen to advise on, having explained in laborious detail the process for washing hands, is the process for washing other, equally, if not more so, germ-transmitting body parts. Not unnaturally, my mind springs to the aforementioned primary sex organs, as well as their closely associated adjuncts: the nape of the neck, for instance; the mouth; the hair; the armpits; the toes (if you’re into that sort of thing); and, obviously, the belly button. Just how does a person wash his, her or its belly button to ensure the safe and non-infectious (or is that just fectious?) passing of a partner’s tongue across it? These instructions are noticeably lacking from soap containers, and one wonders exactly how legislators can justify the astounding lack of primary guidance for the innocent soap-buying public! One even tends to wonder whether the whole soap-application codex is not intended to beguile the beguilable into being beguilingly beguiled into flippancy regarding corporeal cleanliness in other regions of the human body, be they superficial, orificial or super-orificial-expialidocious.
The soap container that first alerted me to the grave concern that Belgium’s legislators harbour for my manual cleanliness came from a national and international supermarket chain, Aldi, which has concerns for my wellbeing at its very corporate heart, and therefore prints these detailed instructions concerning washing your hands in the nation’s three languages: in Dutch, in French and, for the 60,000 who live in the East Cantons, in the German language.
Just exactly how these cautions, instructions and procedures are worded is dictated by the self-same legislators on high, so that the wordings are always standard, vary not a whit, and can be guaranteed to be utterly authentic, which is why manufacturers adhere to them stringently. It is a little unfortunate in this case that the statutory translation into German of the phrase keep out of the reach of children is aus den Händen von Kindern halten: keep out of children’s hands.
Perhaps it’s good that the instruction is aimed at those who cannot yet read.
Wonderful. Number two did if for me too ...
Thank you for a great laugh, this Sunday afternoon, Graham. During the depth of the Covid pandemic, the good Dr. Gupta. made a short video clip for CNN on how to wash your hands. It made me think of my younger brothers and stepson when they were little boys (aged four to nine) When told to wash their hands and face, they were always admonished that someone would check the towels. To a small boy, apparently hands consist only of the palms and faces only that portion that two small hands can cover without moving said hands. The dirt on the back of ones hands or the sides of ones face didn't count.
As to Maria, I empathize with her, as we (women) age, between osteoarthritis and being overweight the ability to turn ones body, especially arms becomes limited.