New stuff is tricky
Of all the shiny new and improved gizmos that have come to fruition since the COVID-19 pandemic landed on our shores, I think I saw the best one at Anderson County High School Monday morning.
It’s all in the wrist, you see.
I’ve grown accustomed to leaning over, bending down, sometimes kneeling, to have my temperature checked whenever I enter a location that demands I have my temperature checked.
I’m tall.
Not gi-normous, or anything freakish. I’m just tall at six feet, four inches. I wasn’t always this tall, so I have sympathy for those who have broken the six-foot plane.
For whatever reason, these fine establishments (doctors’ offices, eye doctors’ offices, dentists, schools, some eating-type establishments) always send the person, who is something like four feet, eight inches tall to check the temperatures of the people who are entering.
Why is that?
I mean, they have to point the little gun-shaped thingy at someone’s head, squeeze the trigger and then read the number. It’d be so much easier on everyone involved if you picked someone who is in the neighborhood of six feet to take on the chore.
Anyway, like I said. I bend down, curtsey almost, to get my temperature taken, which was all fine until the last time I bent down and my back sorta stuck.
It was at a football game. I got some great pictures of my feet and the turf surrounding my feet.
But it gets more complicated.
I’m also very wide. Not gi-normous wide … OK, maybe just a bit on the gi-normous wide side, and whenever I’m told to walk through one of those Star Trek-like scanny things I sometimes get stuck.
That’s a little disconcerting to say the least. I mean, is there something in these scanny things scrambling my brains while I’m stuck there? Is my tattoo safe from these things? Will I lose any more hair than I already have? Can I lose any more hair than I already have?
These are the thoughts that go through my mind when I get stuck in one of these things.
That and, “Will I get unstuck in time for lunch?”
The last time I got stuck, some guy started freaking out and asking if anyone had any kind of motor oil or liquid wrench-type stuff to slather me with so they could push me through. Apparently I was causing a backup in the process and the people behind me were getting restless.
“No, but I have a couple of little packets of mayonnaise.”
I walked around the rest of the day smelling like a ham sandwich.
So Monday when I went to Anderson County High School, the first thing I noted was the scanny thing.
I checked to make sure I had some WD40 in my back pocket. I’d rather smell like I had been working on a car than somebody’s lunch they left in the locker too long.
Then I stopped to get my temperature taken and well … There was nobody there.
“On the scanner,” someone told me.
Sure enough, a little yellow circle was on the scanner with what I assumed was a temperature lens in it.
I leaned over and tried to line my forehead up with it. I’ll admit, I’m not very good at that. Which was confirmed when I didn’t get a “beep.”
“Your wrist. Use your wrist,” someone told me.
I put my hands out waiting for the handcuffs to be slapped on my wrists because I was sure I’d busted the thing and I was in trouble because I probably had a temperature of something like 122 degrees. Or maybe WD40 isn’t allowed in a school. Man, I knew I should have brought the little packets of mayonnaise. Whatever it was, I felt like sitting down and crying.
“Put your wrist up to the scanner,” someone said. No way … Wait, yes way.
“You’re OK,” I was told. “Well, in a sense.”
And that was before I got stuck in the scanny thing and had to ask somebody to reach in my pocket and get my WD40.
