Here’s some handy advice for attacking germs

I wish I had a quarter (inflation has raised the rate from a nickel) for every time in the past three years I’ve written about how important it is to wash your hands.

That doesn’t include the number of interviews or press releases in which health officials cite good hand hygiene as a way to protect yourself from COVID-19, flu and other respiratory ailments.

And every time I write, read or am told about it, again, I wonder: Do we really have to remind people to wash their hands? I mean, isn’t that something people do automatically?

Then I think back a few years ago to when a co-worker and I regularly compared notes on who didn’t stop by the sink after coming out of the bathroom stall. We saw it happen more often than we would have imagined.

And maybe that’s why we’re still beating the drum about the preventive value of soap and water. Who’d have thought?

I don’t want to head toward the rabbit hole and suggest society is going down the toilet because we don’t wash our hands enough. There are plenty more pressing reasons for our decline.

But a little bit of suds, before the dinner table or after the bathroom, after you blow your nose with a tissue and before you touch doorknobs used by others, seems like a really, non-intrusive way to combat cooties. For you and others.

Lest I sound like a holier-than-thou handwasher, I confess that I don’t do it nearly long enough. Sometimes at home, I swipe my hand over the bar soap as if I’m scanning a credit card.

If I’m lucky, I might make it as far as “K” in the ABC song or maybe through two stanzas of “Happy Birthday.”

But I also admit I was wary of germs long before “pandemic” became part of our vocabulary. Not in an obsessive way like Howard Hughes, but more as an acknowledgment that children, lovely as they are, are walking petri dishes.

Before COVID, my companion, Lou, regularly took photos of Parks and Recreation teams and I helped pose the players. Some were as little as preschoolers — getting them into position was as hard as sculpting Jell-O — and I regularly handled the same soccer ball they did.

Often, I’d lean over to get the ball in position and hear sniffles or chest rattles. I saw kids wipe their noses with the back of their hands and stick stubby fingers into their mouths and nostrils — and not necessarily in that order.

That’s why, as soon as we finished and packed up equipment, I reached for the antibacterial wipes.

They’ve been a constant companion since COVID as well, although I know there’s no substitute for water — for me, the hotter the better — and soap, be it bar, liquid or foaming.

I often talk about how society jumps ahead in terms of holiday seasons, so I’m going to make it my New Year’s resolution to stand in front of the sink a little longer, each time I follow the oft-repeated advice from health officials. It’s the best advice I can think of, hands down.

Cathy Dyson is a columnist for The Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Va.