You probably haven’t heard much about it yet in your area.

It’s a new thing, really. Just burst onto the scene about back in … oh, late December, I believe.

Nah, I’m not referring to the whole deal with the super-jolly dude in red flying around on his big old sleigh with his cool caribou pals.

I’m talking about that yucky old situation originally called coronavirus but now referred to as COVID-19.

I know it sounds like a cool trendy ale or neat new video game, but it ain’t. Perhaps you’ve read a little something about it or heard it mentioned on the news — say 4.7 million times per day for the last three months nonstop?

Dude. I get it. Coronavirus, er, COVID-19. It’s a thing. Why y’all gotta scare the bejeepers outta me, yo?

Perhaps we haven’t met. I’m the gal who nearly went into a catatonic state at the mere thought of her son having to partake in a collective collegiate bathroom AT THE END OF THE HALLWAY. Do you know how much potential fungus a newly showered human could pick up between there and a dorm room?.

Oh and hey, did I also mention he had to share that very personal area with an entire floor of other students during his freshman year? Waiting on line for a toity that’s not even in your room.

I could just FEEL the spores sprouting right out from under the floor tiles.

BLECH!

And this I had to swallow after already having reluctantly resigned myself to the fact that he was living in certain squalor with three other 19-year-old boys who clearly didn’t wash out mugs or throw away fast food wrappers — and certainly never thawed their mini-refrigerators.

I literally found the same bag of bagels I put in Kyle’s footlocker fridge in August still on the top rack when we moved him back home the following May. Yup, May.

Of course, each one had a small bacteria forest budding from it in every direction by then.

HARD GULP OF HURL.

And though I worry about, oh, I don’t know, let’s call it EVERYTHING, incessantly, bacteria and its dirty little friends are at the tippy top of the list.

Yes, yes I am a germaphobe; thanks very much.

I blame my folks, really, They taught me never to eat or drink after others. And that you shouldn’t use a public tub, Jacuzzi or sit directly on a common toilet. NEVER.

Look, man, you have no idea what I put my husband and kid through every single time we are in a hotel room. First, the doorknobs, light switches, TV remote and phone get disinfected. Next the top layer of bedding goes into a neat pile in the corner since I won’t be having it touch anyone with whom I share DNA. Then there’s the whole restroom decontamination.

Suffice it to say, I’m in there with bleach for A WHILE, capisce?

I mean, just the fact that someone else’s hands were all over the TP — even if it was to form that pretty little envelope-looking thing on the front — um, no. Just NO.

Listen, unless I gave birth to, share chromosomes / made a human with, or consider you my fam, you don’t need to be so close to my face that I know what you had for dinner on Tuesday night

Hey, we’ll get through this together; just not so CLOSE together for a while, a’ight? Be smart and safe. God bless!

Kimerer is a germaphobe who wants you to read the CDC COVID-19 Prevention Guidelines and her uplifting blog www.patriciakimerer.com.