Germs are everywhere

We should be very scared of germs.  They are EVERYWHERE.  And microscopic or even smaller, so you cannot see them.  They can creep up and attack you from anywhere.  Especially in your home.  This is why you need to buy anti-germ and anti-bacterial products and keep your house as sterilised as a hospital operating theatre.  Or so TV ads tell me.

The humble kitchen sponge is a paradise for germs and bacteria, so based on the horror stories I've seen on TV which include animations of untold numbers of scary green nasty germs, you probably should use just once and throw it away.  Otherwise your children could get a disease and you'll be in trouble for being a parent that just hasn't got the DIRT message.  I say dirt, but I mean germs really.  For goodness sake, didn't you know that walking on the floor in bare feet or even touching the kitchen bench can be life threatening?  You must use antiseptic floor cleaner and antiseptic bench wipes every time anything comes into contact with any surface.  And that's just the kitchen.  You probably should include door handles, taps, computer keyboards and mice, toys, anything at all!   And I'd rather not even go into the bathroom at all.  Except that the latest product I've seen is for anti-bacterial soap that has a "wave your hand in front of it" dispenser.  So you don't even have to TOUCH it.  Because touching means germs!  Get real here.

When I was kid, we lived in a normal house.  I think the kitchen floor got washed once a week?  Gee my parents must have been remiss to the germ dangers back then.  We ran around like maniacs and ate dirt and picked our peanut butter sandwiches up off the ground if we dropped them.  We touched animals and insects and gunk and didn't wash our hands immediately.  I once brought a decomposing dead cat home and made my mother bury it with a funeral and everything.  I survived.  Even without a decontamination ritual outside of a normal bath.  We also used the same soap that other people had actually used before.  How many germs were there in that cake of soap?

Clearly just leaving the house is a hazard because of all those germs lurking.  A few years ago I got golden staph in my right eye.  How did this happen?  My doctor said I must have touched a surface that had been touched before by someone who had golden staph, and then I touched my eye.  Maybe it was a pen?  Or a hand rail on the train?  Think of your children and what you are exposing them to!  Best wear gloves at all times now - I don't think so.  By the way, the golden staph cleared up really quick because I hardly ever take antibiotics.

I don't know how we managed to survive in days gone by without all this anti-bacterial stuff, perhaps we actually developed immunities to germs and bacteria?  What I do know is that there are alarming rates of child allergies in the western world in 2012 and this was something that barely existed when I was a kid.

Please, let them eat dirt.  And catch germs.