Today In Primary We're Going To Learn How To Wash Our Hands - My American Life

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/112/ladies-and-germs

While growing up I was a messy kid. I was a boy, I had a normal back yard, and then a back, back yard that was nothing but desert and it was all mine. I played in the dirt, in the mud, and took a concious effort to drive through as many puddles that I could find whenever I could find them on my bike.

One Sunday, in the middle of primary we had a the new member of the ward come in and teach us all how to wash our hands.

That's right, a stranger, who couldn't even say something about why she was talking to us, like she was a nurse, or doctor or anything like that, gave us a strict how to guide on how to scrub and push all bacteria away from our bodies. She spent time to demonstrate how we should wash both sides of our hands, which soap we should use, and even crazy information that you'd never expect to use like how to turn off the water with your wrist. For a kid that was in grade school and would go home and within the week be in as much dirt as possible, it was ridiculous . . . until I meet Janette.


Janette was two years younger than me (or maybe three, I can't remember exact ages) and she was fighting a crazy fight against childhood leukemia. Her immune system was shot, and she was just getting to the point where her doctors were brave enough to allow her out into social situations with other sticky, dirty, kids.

When it came to Janette, even after a bone marrow transplant, missing hair, and finally remission, cleanliness was always involved. A school bus would drive by us as we walked to school and she would duck her head into her shirt, and try to cover any exhaust from coming into her mouth because thanks to the cancer her lung functions were shot.


My friendship with Janette aside, because I will openly consider her a friend of mine while in grade school, dealing with her was certainly not helpful with my morbidity. I was already a messed up kid with only two living grandparents, and knowing that death was just a step in the process of life, but then my friend that I'd spend playground time with just sitting around and talking (because running was out of the question) had an estimate of how long she was going to live from multiple doctors.

Most people can say that doctors have an estimate of their death from doctors, but that's typically measured in multiple decades. Janette's date was measured in single digits, and maybe a decade if they were really going for a stretch. Any year past eighteen was a flat out medical marvel, and the fact that she's still alive, kicking, and taking names is down right impossible according to the doctors that she had at the time. I knew from a start that my friend at school at any point could catch a cold and die.

Washing my hands, cleaning up, and trying to fight germs and all forms of diseases wasn't just a 'fad' it was a way for me to keep the person I considered a friend alive.