Miss Maidee Had It Right

It seems that Miss Maidee (pronouced May-dee) who was my second grade teacher, was right all along.   She was an old maid and she seemed to me to be ancient.  She had blue hair that she kept in place with a hairnet, wore those "Ole Lady Comfort" shoes (my Mama's name for them) you know the kind that came in any color that you wanted as long as it was black, and  laced up and had big chunky heels...okay I digress......she wore shirt waist dresses that I thought were beyond ugly and she was germophobic.  In fact she took germophobia to a level that is impressive even by todays standards.
She never ever touched any of us.  Well, she never touched our skin.  If for some serious reason that she had to touch one of us, like to jerk Mark Bowie out of his chair and stand him in the corner, she would grab the tiniest corner of our shirt with her thumb and index finger.
And she never ever ever touched a door knob.  Never.  There were three doors to our classroom.  It was the job of whomever sat next to the door to open it for her.  She never touched our desks, our pencils, our books and we never ever touched her desk or her.  If we were called to her desk we stood within 3 feet of her desk and never touched it.
And are you ready for this, she kept a bottle of alcohol on her desk and poured if over her hands anytime she had a potential or real contamination of her hands.  So see that was 50 some odd years ago and she was using alcohol to decontaminate her hands!!  Now that said, her hands were always in terrible shape, they were red, raw, cracked and arthritic.  But I don't remember her being sick or missing a day of school.
She would have loved the alcohol gels..........