In 1970s primary school, the scourge of ‘Girlsgerms!’ was mystifying, and problematic.
First, the patent issue of number.
As this term was an evocation (accompanied by non-consensual touch of the victim) it was heard, not read.
So whether it was one ‘girl’, or all, stayed moot.
Also vague were the ‘germs’.
By context, these were ‘bad’.
Yet unlike later viruses, not transmissible by aerosol or droplet.
Nor was there a credible origin story.
All you knew was that a prospective giver had ‘got’ them from ‘someone else’.
As boys seemed the primary vector of this malaise, their role bears examination.
Questionable, too, was the concept of ‘No returns!’
If valid, this was the first truly oral immunisation.
Or was it merely that a former carrier, having produced antibodies, was free?
(Slightly) easier to comprehend was ‘Dettol!’
If an infected male approached a group of peers, many dominant hands flew to opposite arms to mime inoculation.
Woe betide the laggard, who’d have to walk the earthen playground to seek a slower host.
Hats off to Reckitt & Colman, who realised Garbold Witnossky’s para-chloro-meta-xylenol would never get up in the yard.
Like Hoover and Xerox, this was our categoric killer.
Most troubling, perhaps, was that the greatest exponents of girlsgerms seemed overly fond of loitering near (and even darting into) the girls’ toilets.
As a putative fountainhead of contagion, this seemed counterintuitive.
Were they double agents, running black-flag operations, to the confusion of all?
Or (as today) were we an ailing society
yearning for cure?