Hands, Over, Elbows...

I was watching something on PBS about Ellis Island immigrants and they showed these little kids doing something with a nurse, and it triggered this random memory for me.

So, when I was in school we had a school nurse. Not a health clerk. A school nurse. She was there full time and dealt with an assortment of things--from a scraped knee to a nosebleed to someone who threw up all over the teacher's desk. (Yes, that happened in one of my classrooms. It wasn't me, though.)

Once a month, the school nurse would come to every class and would do a check up that was about 15 seconds long. Here was the routine:

Each student, when it was his/her turn, would say, "Hands, over, elbows, open your mouth, check your neck." At the same time you were saying the words, you would do the following:

HANDS - Hold your hands out for her to inspect, palms down.
OVER - Turn your palms up so she could check out the other side.
ELBOWS - Put your hands up in your shoulders so she could look at your elbows.
OPEN YOUR MOUTH - I'm not sure how we said the words while opening our mouths, but I guess she checked our tonsils or something.
CHECK YOUR NECK - We would put our heads down towards our chest and pull our hair off our necks so she could see our necks.

I have no idea what that was supposed to accomplish. Maybe she was checking for cleanliness? Not sure. It was something that was so routine that we didn't have to be "taught" again every year.

This was done in front of the entire classroom. In today's world, that would NEVER happen! I don't remember anyone ever being hauled out of the classroom for being dirty. Maybe they did that, but did it discreetly?

We did that routine once a month, all through elementary school!

Strange, huh?