Melts in your sleeve, not in your hand -- or something

I didn't know this until recently: When you sneeze, do it in your sleeve or in the crook of your arm.

This becomes more significant when there's a big scare going on about H1N1, the colorless euphemism for that which we used to know as "swine flu."

NBC reporter Chuck Todd got an impromptu sneezing lesson from health secretary Kathleen Sebelius when he let one rip during a press conference (in this case, "letting one rip" means a sneeze rather than the usual, less-delicate meaning of the phrase).

"What's up with that?" Sibelius asked after the explosion. Then, with the media conference on hold for a minute, she gave the errant reporter the proper protocols for screening a sneeze.

Going to school in the Dark Ages (and no, we didn't do our classwork on slate boards) the preferred method of absorbing a sneeze or cough was with a handkerchief. Except I don't know of anyone under the age of 60 who really carries one, and if it's a particularly "meaty" sneeze with lots of viscosity involved, I really can't picture someone shoving the whole mess back in his pocket. Ugh.

Folks my age may carry a bandanna, the great multi-purpose device, though we use it for everything but sneezing. I use mine for wiping sweat, liner for a hard hat (plastic on bare skin -- I have plenty of that topside -- can be really uncomfortable), an emergency dust mask when I'm doing particularly dirty jobs, and as a mute/volume control when playing harmonica into a microphone. But I'd rather sneeze in someone else's shirttail than put my own snot in my pocket.

If you do the faux pas of using your hand, you then (after wiping off the evidence and disposing of it) dose yourself with some hand sanitizer.

Ah, yes. Hand sanitizer. It's supposed to be the new back-to-school item. Except that in some schools that's rationed out as needed. A teacher told me recently that her sixth-grade students are not allowed to carry their own stash of hand sanitizer. It's the alcohol content and the danger of "huffing," i.e. putting a glop of hand sanitizer in a plastic bag and breathing in the aroma. Could be a cheap high, or more likely an even cheaper headache.

Recently I shared a story about how the alcohol content is a reason why the stuff is not being sent to one Indian reservation. I guess use that hand sanitizer if the folks think you're really going to use it for official purposes.