How many of us realised, until now, that we touch our faces more than ninety times a day?
If the possible consequences of this habitual and wholly unconscious touching were not so dire, trying to catch oneself – or one another – at it, could be quite fun. As it is, perhaps best to follow the advice of molecular virologist, James Robb, to stock up with surgical masks to protect our nose and mouth from our own marauding fingers.
What other old habits, it makes one wonder, might turn viral? Surely not the need to avoid stepping on the lines on the pavement? Though now that I tip over more easily, it might be safer to let my feet land where they want to rather than where I feel impelled to direct them.
And though they can do me no harm, should I really still be hearing these words in my head as I fall asleep at night?
Dear God, I pray that Thou will keep me safely in Thy sight
And grant to me a healing sleep right through the long, dark night.
Rooted in early childhood, they are impossible to eradicate.
It’s hard to let go of things which have stuck in some back room of the brain, and though something must have happened, perhaps adolescence, to make me abandon my Lucky Number – the lovely curvaceous 8 – this is the only mental habit I have managed to drop. But that change of allegiance, from even numbers to odd, still feels like a betrayal.
Of course, not everyone is such a creature of habit: the walls of my living room are still the same dark brown that almost frightened off a prospective lodger, more than forty years ago . . .
As for why that habitual childhood taunt – angst katchen! – has come into my head now, more than eighty years since I abruptly stopped talking German, could it be because I have just decided not to let a friend into the house?
It is not only conscience that makes cowards of us all.