Germ Warfare

It’s all out germ warfare. Not in Iraq. Right here at home. More precisely: up and down aisle 7 at my local Piggly-Wiggly. That’s where you’ll find a battalion of antibacterial soaps in a variety of colors, sizes, liquid, bar, pump top and squeeze bottle. They’re lined up like precision soldiers, a delta force ready to combat the scourge of streptococcus and some guy named Sal Monella. But the latest dirt on the suds biz is bursting the industry’s bubble. Seems all those antibacterial soaps are overkill. A new study found that any old soap is just as good as the death-to-the-bacterium variety. And that’s got the antibacterial folks in a lather.

This is good news for me because I’ve never been a fanatic about cleanliness. Whatever the opposite of a clean freak is, (a filth fan?) that’s me. I keep dust bunnies as house pets. I bought a gray colored car because it hides dirt well. My clothing is black cause it masks food stains best. If there was a color darker than black, I’d switch to that. It’s a backlash against my “Mommy, Cleanest,” childhood. She wasn’t armed with wire hangars. Her scepter was a toilet bowl brush. I probably shouldn’t air our dirty laundry in public but she was a woman obsessed. Instead of cans of tuna and boxes of cereal, our pantry was filled with dozens of cleaning products - one for every surface in our house. There was a whole shelf of home brews. If she wasn’t satisfied with the cleansing action of a manufactured product, she’d whip up something better, something overpowering. While most kids in school were getting high smoking dope, my mother was turning us on with hallucinogenic concoctions that would have made Timothy Leary jealous. But, man, could she wipe out those pesky ground in dirt stains.

While I definitely do not have my mother’s clean gene, I got some mutation that turned me into a soap addict. My bathroom is overflowing with a cornucopia of soaps: Lavender, Imperial Leather, Lemon Drop, Strawberry, Passion fruit-Papaya, Peppermint, Rosemary/Peppermint, Pure Vegetable, Pure Vanilla, Vanilla Bean with Oatmeal, Oatmeal with Hazelnut, Almond and something called the Apple Body Bar that I’ve scrubbed down into the shape of a banana. If I’m hungry in the shower I’m tempted to munch on my soap. And I confess I’ve swiped them all from hotels. Hey, if they didn’t want you to take the soap, they’d nail it down like the remote control and those purple-tinted seascapes above the bed. I’ve even gone so far as taking those little pink slivers that pass for soap in the “sanitized for your protection” motels. In my book that’s code for ‘wrap yourself up in a body condom before crossing the tiled threshold.’

Curiously, not one bar of pilfered soap is “antibacterial.” Are hotels untroubled by the fact that each palm has as many as 5 million bacteria lounging around your flesh and sloughing off all over the place? (are those with the most germs heavy handed?) Or did the hotels know something all along? It wasn’t until the 1840s that anyone worried about washing up. That’s when a German doctor Ignaz Semmelweis suggested his students wash up after autopsies and before delivering babies. I’d venture to say Dr. Semmelweis is the father of those modern day bathroom signs “Employees Must Wash Hands.” However, Dr. Semmelweis had his students use chlorine. Even my mother would think that’s excessive.

No doubt Mom will also be happy to hear the government wants to replace soap with a new potion. No less than the Centers for Disease Control wants the medical troops to replace soaping up with rubbing in fast acting disinfecting gel. Seems that the medics don’t spend the appropriate amount of time lathering up. Everyone’s in such a hurry. The new gel will take a fraction of the time. I’m all for that. It’s made of alcohol. I’m all for that too. Will it come in margarita flavor?

To get the full effect of antibacterial soap you have to lather up and wait about 2 minutes. If you think 2 minutes in football runs long, just stand over a sink with your hands in the air. Now, from the DUH! school of life’s instructions, (lesson one; shampoo, rinse, repeat) the experts say, all you really need to do is give your hands a good 15 second scrub with any old soap. To get the timing right it’s been suggested that you sing Happy Birthday. Excuse me! Who sings it in 15 seconds?! Do these people know me? In a rush to dive into the cake I’m the one leading the chorus in a break-neck version of the birthday anthem. Eight seconds max. If I’m now gonna need to slow down my rendition, I’ll have to do that sexy Marilyn Monroe version, the one she performed for President Kennedy in a slinky sequin number. It will be an especially effective germ repellant by keeping anyone out of earshot of my tonally challenged version. Not to mention the most potent deterrent: Me squirming into a skin tight sequin dress just to wash up - that’s not germ warfare - that’s a weapon of mass distraction.

by Stephanie Becker, Mass Distractions columnist for BestStuff.com