Did You Just Sneeze in My Face?

The human body has an amazing ability to defend and heal itself via the wonders of the human immune system.
I think when God gave us this ability he had teachers in mind.

I hope this isn’t a revelation to anyone out there: 12 year olds are not the most hygienic, sanitary creatures. They’re more like cesspools, really.
The concept of ‘cover your mouth’ is foreign, sleeves and fingers are tissues. They hack and sneeze all over a paper and then shove it into your hands. My immune system and prayer are all I have to keep me alive.

I guess it’s the changing of the season into winter, or the cold rain, I don’t know why all the kids have suddenly become wheezing, coughing snot monsters- but they have. Every class period I send at least one student to the nurse to go home because they can’t even breathe through their noses and their temperature is so high they’re practically sizzling in their seat.

Why are these kids at school? If they’re sick at 10am in my class, they’re sick when they wake up in the morning. Parents- don’t bring them to school! They get here just long enough to touch everything with their germs and then go home, leaving their bacteria behind to jump on new hosts. The school becomes a breeding ground for every kind of everything that makes you feel sickly. And the people who get the full blast of it are the teachers.

We come into contact with everything. We basically live in this school. Every paper, door handle, book, computer keyboard, dry erase marker, desk or pencil- we touch. But the true danger comes from the student to teacher face-to-face time.
We get down on the kid’s level all the time, breathing the same little space of air, mixing their contagious breath with my innocent health system.

I don’t know about all students, but my particularly charming ones like to cough and sneeze. Into my face.
At close range.
Often.
When I get hit with a blast from a nose or a mouth (or both at once), I get the overwhelming urge to simultaneously vomit/douse my entire body in hospital sterilizing solution. But there’s no time for that, I have to simply wipe my face and finish instructing the sickly student.

I took extra vitamin C this morning, and I had a quite painful steroid booster shot two weeks ago. The sink + soap are my best friends and I try not to touch my face- ever. I hope this isn’t a losing battle, in which my inevitable loss is to get sick. I want to ride through the battlefield on my powerful white horse of an immune system and educate in the face of snot and coughs.
Or stay home under the covers and hide.