After all, it seemed to come so suddenly and so mysteriously. Once it was recognized, doctors were trying everything to help people avoid the virus. Each day there seemed to be more known about the sickness which required more help and advice.
One of the first things we were told to do was to wash our hands many times a day, using hot water and soap. We were advised to clean ourselves, the tools and instruments we use, and everything we touched in our homes and workplaces.
Keeping clean and using handkerchiefs or tissues was recommended. Strangely, one item that everyone seemed to think was very necessary was toilet paper (TP). Stores could not keep it on the shelves and when the stores had some, grocery buggies were piled high with it.
One of the first things we were told to do was to wash our hands many times a day, using hot water and soap. We were advised to clean ourselves, the tools and instruments we use, and everything we touched in our homes and workplaces.
Keeping clean and using handkerchiefs or tissues was recommended. Strangely, one item that everyone seemed to think was very necessary was toilet paper (TP). Stores could not keep it on the shelves and when the stores had some, grocery buggies were piled high with it.
It was not a problem at our house. I keep a roll by every computer is our house (3), on the stand by my bed, on a shelf by my “easy chair,” and, of course, in all the bathrooms. So we always have plenty.
Why do I do this you may ask. I learned from a friend, a school teacher, to use TP as Kleenex. It does the same job and cost much less. She learned about TP from her students. When she started teaching she kept a box of Kleenex on her desk, and students were welcome to them. However, she couldn’t keep enough as the students took great advantage of her generosity.
She came up with the idea of TP on her desk for students to use. Students rarely used the TP. She determined that young adults (especially girls) had an aversion to it, especially in front of their peers.
Her cost of suppling kids with something to blow their noses into was no longer expensive.
So I decided to use TP at home in places that are almost exclusive to my family’s access. However in the open places in the house, I set out some very nice Kleenex for my guests.
One day a few weeks ago, a friend came to have lunch with me while Russell was having lunch at his weekly Lions Club meeting. When she left my house she had to stop at a grocery store and get some potatoes. Later that evening I got a message from her. She said she got the potatoes and then decided to get a bottle of dish soap. There was not a bottle in the store. None. Zip.
I was surprised as I wasn’t aware that people were hoarding dish soap. It made me wonder what would be next. I soon learned that the list of things to hoard was long and sometime had what I thought were strange items.
Just between you and me, people are sometimes hard to figure out.
(Kay Hively is a historian, author of former reporter, editor and columnist for the Neosho Daily News and Neosho Post.)
4 comments:
I learned from a friend, a school teacher, to use TP as Kleenex. It does the same job and cost much less. She learned about TP from her students. When she started teaching she kept a box of Kleenex on her desk, and students were welcome to them. However, she couldn’t keep enough as the students took great advantage of her generosity.
She came up with the idea of TP on her desk for students to use. Students rarely used the TP. She determined that young adults (especially girls) had an aversion to it, especially in front of their peers.
Her cost of suppling (sic) kids with something to blow their noses into was no longer expensive.
Several points:
First- Why are teachers responsible for supplying necessary classroom sanitary supplies (that is what facial tissues are) for the use of their students? What kind of conservative stupidity causes thinking like this? Do the teachers also have to supply the toilet paper the students use?
Second- Toilet paper obviously doesn't do the same job as facial tissue if the kids don't use it. Does your typewriter allow you to access the internet when you type the http://www on it? If not, then your typewriter doesn't do the same job as your laptop keyboard, even if you can type documents on both of them.
Third- What did this teacher think happened when facial tissues were replaced with toilet paper? That all the runny noses magically stopped running? That would be just like a miracle, if that's what happened. Instead, perhaps, the students simply avoided the embarrassment of using toilet paper by wiping their noses on their arms and hands and shirts in an unsanitary manner (remind me again why people started using DISPOSABLE facial tissues to blow and wipe their noses) and thus spread their germs all around the classroom and to each others homes.
Fourth- Her cost of suppling (sic) kids with something to blow their noses into was no longer expensive. The insignificant monetary savings were realized by the teacher, the costs were borne by all who got sick as a result of the shortsighted and thoughtless penny pinching. Or the classmates in some cases were just inconvenienced by having to listen to their classmates sniffle and sneeze. Economists call that an externalized cost. As in the case of a chemical manufacturer who 'cuts costs' and 'increases profits' by dumping toxic wastes into the environment instead of treating them. That cost is externalized to society who does not benefit from the illicit profit increase but bears the costs of the pollution in the form of environmental damage and associated remediation costs.
7:44 PM
I bet you are really fun at parties.
I don't tolerate stupid very well.
The above is the same type of misguided thinking that led parents to take their kids to chickenpox parties.
Or more recently, for people to advocate that we should hurry up and take action to expose lots of people to the Covid-19 so the USA could bury it it's dead and move on.
So which part of the stupid are you a fan of?
Boy are you upset. Teachers help students in many ways that you would probably never understand.
Why don't you be a good guy and offer to supply your local school with Kleenex next year and save everyone's life.
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