ma17 athens parent.qxp:ja07 athens parent.qxp
3/22/17
1:02 PM
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“Warning Advisory Against Hand-Washing”
I’m sure, as you were growing up, your parents admonished you to Always Wash Your Hands, and perhaps they added, Thoroughly, or,With Soap, Just Splashing Water Around Doesn’t Count. Well, I am here from the National Institute of Microbial Preservation to tell you: DO NOT. Your keeping your hands unwashed is nothing short of a Moral obligation. Did you know that, this very instant, you have Over 4,000 species of bacterial friends living all over your hands? Imagine Little bacteria families, the bacteria father kissing his bacterial daughter Before going off to his bacterial job somewhere on your left ring finger. Well, perhaps these bacteria colonizing your hands do not necessarily form A microcosm of society. A jungle, perhaps, is a more accurate analogy – A nice jungle, of course, with nice monkeys and nice jaguars and nice Mosquitoes. Anyway, there is indisputably a great diversity of life All over those delightfully germy hands of yours, all flourishing with a great Dignity and a slightly-less great tendency to make people ill. But every time You irresponsibly wash your hands, these teeming masses of life are swept away Mina Yu
Original Poetry by Mina Yu
In a Great Flood which, to them, rivals that of Noah; every dollop of hand sanitizer Is bacterial blitzkrieg! But if you never wash your hands again, never scrub at them With a bar of clean soap until they feel fresh and lovely, why, then, you will be giving A much-needed home to these tiny creepy-crawlers, and I am sure that, despite Lacking a brain altogether, they will be incredibly grateful to you.They’ll hang pictures Of your face on their bacterial walls! The prices of the bacterial properties on your hands Will hike to unseen levels! They’ll write your name in their bacterial textbooks and sing Your name in their bacterial songs! (Maybe they’ll even forget To make you sick!) ■ Mina Yu is a junior at Oconee County High School. She loves to write poetry and prose in a variety of different genres. When she isn’t writing, you can probably find her curled up in a corner with a book or playing a very odd woodwind instrument called a bassoon.
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Athens-Oconee Parent