Hand Sanitizer and a Mother's Worst Fear

I was at Disney recently, and not exactly by my own choice, but the story there gets hazy and is full of cartoons and roller coasters and there's no real reason to go into further detail. We'll begin and end the Disney segment with this: I was at Disney recently, and not exactly by my own choice.

A reality of theme parks and public places in general is their near uniform lack of cleanliness (on the germ level.) You can pay people to walk around picking up trash and wiping down glass...

Smiles? Here, sir. Anti-bacterial spray? He didn't show up for work, sir. Damnit, forget him boys, we'll do this with brooms and trash scoops alone. Once more into the breach, gentlemen.

...but in the end, every park goer, mall goer, boardwalk walker and roller coaster enthusiast, is touching every park surface, every bathroom faucet and every single one of those roller coaster line railings. Just running their hands all the way along them. All the way along.

I give you for evidence, my dear ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, Exhibit 1.

So it should be no surprise to a country full of scared mothers that those very same women who help perpetuate those germs, are terribly afraid of them, in a deep and lasting way. Germs scare mothers on more than one level.

a) They're gross. You touched this, and you probably went to the bathroom this week. And you probably didn't wash. (And mothers have this talent for saying words like "probably" so they sound more like "definitely." And they're so good at it that you actually begin to feel guilty.)

b) Germs can get their kids sick. And there's nothing a mother hates more in the entire World than anything that harms her baby. Unless of course it's the fact that she had kids in the first place, a lot of mother's seem to hate that. Under their breath, to other parents, when their kids aren't looking, or are so young to not hear (or rather, understand) the insult.

c) When kids get sick it's really inconvenient. Work has to be called in. Schoolwork has to be sent home. Lots of driving. Lots of appointments at lots of doctors. Waiting in waiting rooms, waiting in line at the grocery store for soup, waiting in line at the pharmacy, watching the same cartoon movie four times in as many hours, and when the child is finally asleep, not being able to think of anything other than that damn cartoon the rest of the evening.

At the end of my Disney day, I was sitting with my friend on a bench, waiting for our bus to come take us back to the car. We were settled in right next to a couple and their young daughter. It was about five o'clock in the afternoon and the mother and father were watching their child run around with open surprise. I could see the question floating through their heads, "What did she take to get this kind of energy and where can I get some?"

The daughter kept running over to a bench, touching it, hitting it, and sprinting back to her mother. And like clockwork, her mother would demand of her daughter, "Show me your hands." With a sullen obedience the girl would put out her hands, allowing her mother to put anti-bacterial on, before she sprinted off to explore our little corner of Disney.

After about five minutes of this the mother just had her hand sanitizer at the ready, and the daughter would sprint over with her hands out. Time savers, all.

Finally, the young girl runs over to me. She says something along the lines of "Diiiiiisneeeey" before running over to the trash can. This was the last object in our space that she hadn't explored. She hadn't touched.

But the carrot was on the string. The apple had been seen. Temptation is a cruel bitch.

Her mother looked on with a kind of distant horror, I would describe it as a pure understanding of the fact that nothing good could come of this. Her daughter continued to look at the trash, so she said, "Come here, honey. Why don't you play with your toys!"

Without even a look at her mother the little girl grabbed both sides of the trash receptacles opening, and shoved her entire head inside.

The mother's head mimicked the girl's motion, but instead of into a trash can, into her lap.

Dear God, why do I bother?

Finally the father got up, fighting a smile, and pulled his daughter's head out and hands off of the trash can.