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Collected Item: “I Missed Normal Hand Sanitizer”

Give your story a title.

I Missed Normal Hand Sanitizer

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Text Story

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

I am a high school teacher, so I used a lot of hand sanitizer long before COVID-19. One of the things that I will never forget from the pandemic was the smell of the hand sanitizer. There were shortages on all disinfectants for months, and the hand sanitizers I could find were brands I had never seen before. The worst part about this new hand sanitizers was the smell. They all had a sharp smell, much worse than the normal alcohol smell. Some smelled truly terrible, almost rotten. I put lemon essential oil in one to try to change the smell, but it made no difference. It just smelled like rotten citrus.
When my school went back in person in the fall of 2020, the worst part was having to sanitize all the time with the stinky hand sanitizer. I gained a whole new appreciation for Germ-X. It was almost sad how happy I was when I found a bottle of Germ-X stashed in my cupboard (because teachers were hoarding cleaning supplies before it was cool). I put it on my teacher desk behind my computer and hoarded it from the kids!

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

#ArizonaStateUniversity #HST643 #SensoryHistory #shortages #sanitizer

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Amy Koppenhafer

Give this story a date.

2020-08-15
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