SHOPPING WHILE SELF-ISOLATING
All the Elbit in us wants to do is get in, get out and not get infected. It sounds so simple ………
When Hong Kong ran short of loo paper as COVID-19 struck, millions of people around the world decided should stock up or die. Forgetting (or ignoring) the fact that China produced all of Hong Kong’s post 1997 tissue in a temporarily crippled manufacturing sector, our own idiot-sector began panic-buying the stuff. Clearly no thought had been given to our own loo roll source, because here in Australia we have home grown forests and manufacturers. Suddenly, supermarket shelves were stripped bare, police were called out to break up fights in aisles, while trolleys, walking sticks and Zimmer frames became ramming weapons as 50 percent of the human race reverted to its Neanderthal roots. Although I wasn’t bitten by the panic-buying bug, the Elbit in me decided we had to stock up and hibernate, so I headed for the supermarket armed with everything I needed to stay safe.
I had a stroke a couple of years back, so I walk with a stick for balance and I’m considered an at-risk person. Before the stroke, I was always a bit of a hypochondriac, so the transition wasn’t too hard, and I chose to wear a medical mask and a single medical glove for my shopping expedition. I had this scathingly brilliant idea that I could do clean-hand, dirty-hand routine as I shopped. My left hand would continue to be my stick hand and remain untouched by trolleys and groceries as I saved it for getting my card out of my purse at the checkout. My right hand was to be the gloved one, and with that baby I’d drive the trolley, put the goods in it, place them on the checkout counter, and finally heave the filled shopping bags back into the trolley. I would then use clean-hand to pay, wheel the trolley back to the car, load it up and drive off happy. How hard could it be? All I had to do was stay 1.5 metres away from anybody (or I’d die), wipe down the packages when I got home (or I’d die) and make sure I washed my hands when I got back in the car (or I’d die).
Suitably attired as Michael Jackson sans chimp, I entered the store, selected a small trolley and began shopping. The first flaw to my brilliant plan (yes, there were more than one) occurred almost immediately in fruit-n-veg. Have you ever tried placing broccoli in a plastic bag with only one hand operational? To begin with, those ridiculous bags are bound together by some insane magnetic force, and prying open the top is a skill known only to certain super-shoppers and Spiderman. Believe me, one handed shoppers wearing a latex glove haven’t a hope in hell, but as I stood there pondering the mechanics, I looked at the price and almost fell over. Overnight, it had more than tripled because broccoli and cauliflower were now in short supply! I ruminated somewhat bitterly that regardless of its availability, cauliflower and broccoli still cost the same to grow, so I abandoned them and moved onto the spuds and further disappointment. I half expected to see single potatoes individually priced, such was the exorbitant hike. I thus decided to look in the frozen section for veggies (which ultimately offered new disappointment when I discovered much of it was processed in China – the source of that which was trying to kill us all).
Moving into the main part of the supermarket, I went to take my shopping list out of my pocket, only to discover I’d put it in my right-hand pocket. Now, I’m not a large person, but it was still a super-human effort to reach across my abdomen with the left clean-hand and dig into the opposite jeans pocket for the list. Looking something like a cicada practising yoga, I had to twist from the left, stop my walking stick from swinging into the trolley and becoming contaminated, hang onto the trolley with dirty-hand for balance, raise my right leg a little and finally create the necessary east-west connection. As I perfected my St Vitus’ dance, I suddenly realised that the list was actually in my back pocket. More awkward yoga positions followed before I gave up, reached into the pocket with dirty-hand and felt as though I’d just committed suicide. Making a mental note to boil my jeans when I got home, I continued shopping and finally reached the rice aisle. Large signs advised me that I was only permitted to purchase one bag of rice over 2kg. The shelves were virtually empty, save for one 2kg bag and two 25kg bags, so I opted for a 25kg bag as the other wouldn’t last more than two weeks in our household. Feeling the looming presence of other rice shoppers, I had to act fast before I was gazumped, so I reached down with dirty-hand, invited clean-hand to join the party and hefted 25kg of rice up into the trolley. I then made a new mental note to burn both my jeans and my shirt when I got home.
I slipped more comfortably into my clean-hand, dirty-hand routine to finish the shopping, inwardly screaming at people who came too close while selecting the remainder of my groceries, but reasonably happy that I’d got most things apart from veggies, hand-wash, toilet paper, tissues, soap, disinfectant, butter, eggs, flour and sugar (two-thirds of my shopping list). Deftly, I used dirty-hand to load up the checkout with my purchases, allowed the operator to hand scan the rice and then realised that I had to open my purse with clean-hand, extract my card and then hold it over the machine while hanging onto said purse, as well as my walking stick, reading glasses and sunglasses. I may as well have been holding a set of dentures in a glass, such was my dilemma, so I placed the purse and glasses on the checkout, the stick on the trolley and totally shattered my former scathingly brilliant plan. I now had to burn my jeans and shirt, wash every exposed part of my body with alcohol and disinfect my walking stick, purse and glasses when I got home. By the time I reached the car, my inner Elbit was having an anxiety attack, and I wasn’t far behind it. I’d broken all of my anti-contamination rules, and I was about to place parcels recently handled by infected teenage shelf stackers into an enclosed space with my 84-year-old mother and me. Cursing every Chinese bat eater still alive, I loaded up the back of the car, drowned everything in Glen-20 spray and made us both cough (60% ethanol will do that to you) and decided I needed to give my shopping methodology greater thought before I ventured out again. I also decided that I should do it within nine days, as day ten was when the first symptoms of my contamination would manifest themselves. Elbit agreed with me, between sobs.
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Elbit vs. COVID-19 