Mar 5, 2020 3 min read

So we’re not supposed to touch our faces these days. We’re also supposed to cough into the crook of our elbows and wash our hands while singing “Happy Birthday,” but the most important way for an individual to keep the virus away is to not touch the face – not anyone else’s and definitely not our own.

And this I find challenging.

We all are face touchers, I suppose, because the face is where all the action is. We talk from there, see from there, smell from there, eat from there, breathe from there, smile from there, blink from there. The face is the Starfleet Command Center of the human body.

I use my face for all those things, and then some. My bangs are getting long, and so at least three times per minute I reach up to push them out of my eyes. I am allergic to the new puppy, which makes my eyes water and itch. That’s another time or two each minute poking at my eyes. Sometimes my nose runs and, strangely, I’ve found that I am probably also allergic to the inexpensive tissues the farmer stocks up on when he goes to Costco. Basically, my face is a snuffy, blubbering mess that constantly demands that my hands pay attention to it.

And then there’s the thing I do with my chin. There’s a reason Rodin posed his bronze hero with chin in hand and then named him The Thinker: Brains work better when the head is propped up on something. I spend most of my day writing, which means 10% typing but 90% thinking, and for that my elbow goes onto the desk and my palm opens to cradle my chin. After decades of this kind of work, it has become instinct, as automatic and involuntary as scratching an itch.

Which, now that I’m thinking of it, is happening on my face. My nose itches, and because I’m thinking about it, the itching will continue for the next couple of minutes. Elbows are safe; maybe I could scratch my nose in the crook of my elbow. But didn’t I just sneeze into that spot this morning? Are there germs there now? Next time, I’m switching to the other elbow.

I hope the coronavirus fades before more people get sick. But the next couple of months might be a little tricky for all of us.

Necessity is the mother of invention. It’s possible that at this moment, whiz kid coders are coming up with a computer app that will beep an alarm when I touch my face. Maybe it would be a camera I’d wear on my head like a miner’s light; it would detect the motion when my hand comes close to my face and then sound a warning. It would be something along the lines of that little sensor device you wear on your upper back that beeps when you slouch. Can you imagine the cacophony of beeping that would erupt from the desks of us writers and thinkers?

For now, all I can do is remind myself to keep my hands to myself, but it’s not easy. This is the point at which I need to stop typing and think about how to end this column. My chin is itching to prop itself in my hand, but no. I’ll have to learn to think without it.