Obsessed with reality tv!

This guest post from Mickey Garza.

I have become obsessed with reality television shows. I know they have become the new fad, but I used to hate them. The only reality show I watch was “The Amazing Race”, which isn’t even a true reality show. I guess it might go into the category of game show. Nonetheless, it was once the only show I watched. Now every show I watch is a reality show. I even got excited when I saw direct tv madison offered a reality television channel. Last year I would have thought it was a terrible idea. I would have gone on to question the people who would watch it. Now I find myself calling them to get it added to my lineup. I am wondering what has happened to me. Have I stopped using my brain to watch television? Have I started enjoying over dramatized lives? I guess the answer to all the questions is yes. But I am happy right now and I enjoy the shows, so I guess there is not anything wrong with it.

They Shared a BUM-BUM SPONGE. O. M. G.

So I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day (Sherilin's Laughing My Abs Off), and not only did it make me shriek in horror, but it was so, so appropriate for my own Bum-Bum Germs blog that I asked if I could repost it. She graciously agreed, and now you get to experience the horror too:

---

never take for granted...

i bet from the title, you were thinking i was going to go deep on this post. talk about never taking our loved ones or our health for granted. you thought wrong, my friend. my last post had some depth, so i couldn't go there again so soon.

no, what i'm talking about today is toilet paper. i got a book out of the kids science section about the history and workings of toilets (i love the library and the gems i find there).

here's a picture i took of a page in the book that left me with my mouth in a cringe and my eyebrows in a pinch.



in case you can't read it clearly, let me point out a few pertinent bits. "Ancient Romans used a sponge on the end of a stick to clean up after using the toilet." this seemed all right to me initially. a sponge is soft and wet. okay, the romans had a good idea there other than the fact that they had a room filled with toilet holes all in a U shape so several people could go at once while looking at each other.

but the next line stopped me in my sponge-happy tracks. "When finished, they put the sponge in a pail full of water so that the next person could use it."

great googly moogly..... this is NOT okay! they shared a poop sponge?!! not so bad if you're the first guy with a fresh sponge, but something tells me it didn't get changed too often. and i know how gross a kitchen sponge gets after a few days, so i can only imagine how vile a community hiney sponge would be after a few days on booty duty!

the next line that had me making faces was, "Some used stones, sand, or seashells to scrape themselves clean."

a rock? did they hunt about for the perfect butt scraping rock and then keep it for using over and over? or did they just grab up any ole rock they could reach while squatting and just jam it back there and try to knock off the big bits? would a rounded or jagged rock work more effectively?

and i don't know about you, but when i'm at the beach and get sand in my suit, i pretty much just rip my suit to the side and try to shake, swipe or rinse it out with little regard for who's about because i cannot STAND how it feels! imagine using sand as a wipe! i've heard of using sand to wash dishes in a pinch, but never your crack. Ick!

the worst part in that sentence might be the seashell. i was just at the beach a couple months ago and i collected and examined a lot of different types of shells, so when i read this, i did a mental inventory of the shapes, sizes and textures of various shells, trying to figure out which seemed the most wipe-like for bum scrape-age.

this one seems somewhat manageable, i guess. you could use one side for scooping and the other side for buffing after the scrape was completed.



and i would definitely avoid this next shell, even if it was the only thing readily at hand. because, wowie zowie, i don't think anyone's rump could handle that.



this book made me very grateful for the lovely and delicate luxury that i've always taken for granted. oh blessed, glorious toilet paper, you are so precious to me. and your cousin, the moist, flushable wipe, is a gift to the behinds of this century. i will never take either of you for granted again. amen.

---

Jo's Note:

May I suggest this toilet paper?

Wherein the Paterfamilas Blogs About Life With Me & OCD.

Awhile back, I asked my husband to write a guest blog about what life with me is like. I wanted him to be honest. So he obliged. Here is his take on the matter:

---

The other day Jo asked me to write about what it’s like to be her husband, what with all the stuff she believes and does when it comes to germs and such. So here it is. I’ll just start by saying I love her with all my heart, but there are unique…challenges…that come with that.

When we first met, I was among the majority of people who, while obviously familiar with the concept of germs, didn’t give crap about it. I’d wash my hands after using the bathroom, but aside from that I was a veritable libertine. I wore my shoes in the house. I didn’t always wash before eating. [Ed. Note: Jo, here. I also want to alert you that he didn't even have handsoap in the gee-dee kitchen and that this was nearly a deal-breaker. But my first gift to him was kitchen handsoap. That was love, baby.]

I’d get a cold once in a while, but figured it was just the cost of doing business in a fallen world. Whatever.

She gently suggested early on (not necessarily saying it outright, but often through friendly glances of disapproval, hard to explain) that if we were going to be a “thing” then I’d need to take some modest steps to make her feel comfortable at my place, and set the ground rules for visiting her place. Shoes off and washing hands when entering the ancestral manse were kind of the basics that were required. They were no big deal, and they were reasonable requests once I considered the implications of NOT doing those things.

So STOP RIGHT THERE and reread that last sentence, because it basically tells the entire story of Jo. Allow me to 'splain:

First off, I didn’t care about germs because I hadn’t ever cared about germs. I hadn’t thought about it, so I didn’t understand the implications. I was in a state of Rumsfeldian Unknown Unknowns. This is the blissful state most people live in, but which fills Jo with anxiety and, at times, contempt. Her anxiety and preoccupation gives her deep insight into a subject that most other people either never learned or simply ignore. In my mind, I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I was OK with that. In her mind, for example, seeing someone leave the public restroom without washing their hands is an action bordering on moral depravity. In my mind, catching a cold is to be expected in the course of human events. In her mind, my catching a cold might be a sign of personal failure.

Using her "Acid Test" friends as an example, they were blissfully ignorant about germs and their potential effects. But Jo feels that everybody should be as knowledgeable and fearful about this stuff as she is, and when they aren’t she disapproves. She saw failure to respect hygiene. She didn’t consider that what was going on was just what was NORMAL at her friends’ house (however horrifying). They weren’t trying to make anybody sick, they weren’t (in their minds) being sloppy. They just didn’t consider it unusual. But what was normal for them made Jo cry all the way home. I, for one, enjoyed the meal. I think I had the shits for a while, though.

Another example: Last year my sister made a birthday cake for my nephew. We knew that she had made it while she had a cold. Despite that, I attended the party and had a piece of the cake. Jo stayed home, being very pregnant. [Ed. Note: Jo here, again. I stayed home because I was terrified of catching my sister-in-law's (and her kids') cold.]

A few days later, I caught that cold. Therefore, it wasn’t just bad luck that I caught a cold; according to Jo, it was a moral failure on my part to attend the party and not refuse the cake. (Note that while I likely did catch the cold from attending the party and eating the cake, the possibility that I could have caught that cold from a different source, like from work or a restaurant, wasn’t even an argument worth considering.) From Jo’s point of view, the act of eating that birthday cake was a direct assault on her personal (pregnant) health, and nothing would be able to convince her otherwise.

Secondly, the tricky part about this disorder (if that’s what it is) is that she can make the argument that she’s RIGHT. This isn’t like somebody who has an irrational fear of going outside, or heights, or pickles or whatever. Is it over the top to take a Lysol wipe to the restaurant table when compared to how the rest of the world behaves? Yes. Does doing so potentially make it safer to eat there? Yes.

I don’t know what the percentage decrease in the likelihood of catching something is when she does it, but there probably is one. So she does it. The irrational part comes in because the numbers don’t matter to her. If there’s a one in a billion chance that we’ve wiped the MRSA off the table that otherwise would have caused our kid to have her arm amputated, it’s all worthwhile. That’s an extreme example of course, but it illustrates what I’m getting at. Yes, she lives at the kooky fringe of societal norms, but she’s only trying to make us safer. So it’s hard to tell her to drop the effing bleach.

So back to life. It started out pretty reasonable. She’s always been hyper-conscious about germs, but she kept it contained. If she needed something done a certain way, she’d do it, and had modest expectations for other people. I figured she was just doing what she felt she needed to do to feel comfortable, so I didn’t pay much attention. I’ve always done what I can within what sounded reasonable to help out.

And I’ve come to appreciate the idea of what she’s doing. I like the idea that our house is kind of a haven from the public viral melting pot. I can lay on the carpet and be confident that nobody’s traipsed in any Walmart public bathroom dregs. I know that whatever we make at home is going to be cooked correctly. I know that all of our fruits and veggies are clean. We agree on the Hygiene Hypothesis stuff, and we agree that we don’t want our kids to be sick and that we can put it a little extra effort to prevent it. We have a nice, comfy home.

And it’s not like she’s terrified of being unclean. She’s A-OK with dirt. She’s willing to play in the dirt with the kids and the kids get filthy from playing outside and she has absolutely no problem with it. She’s not even really afraid of Maya being adventurous and getting scrapes and bruises. She’s not that kind of helicopter mom. Her anxieties and fears are wrapped up in germs and viruses. So it’s not like she’s limiting childhood or family fun time. The complications we deal with really revolve around eating and licking stuff that could have come from somebody’s ass or nostrils. If that’s not a factor, things are pretty normal.

By God, she'll have a frosting fight and love every minute of it.

Having said that, I really noticed a ratcheting up of the anxiety after we had our first kid, though.  That was when she started getting really anxious about taking the baby to other people’s places. She couldn’t control the environment as well as she could at home. And when people would visit, she started getting nervous about them touching stuff (especially the baby's toys) if they hadn’t washed hands, of if they had washed hands but then sneezed or touched their cell phone or camera, etc. After people would leave, she’d whip out the Lysol and assault doorknobs and baby toys and remotes that they’d touched, and replace any hand towels they’d dried their hands with. It made me sad, because it meant she’d been on edge the whole time they were there, watching what they were touching and tracking their movements and committing them to memory and not enjoying the company of visitors. And after the pregnancies, it hasn’t gone away. And now that I’m aware of these feelings she has, it’s stressful for me to go visit family or have visitors over or generally do stuff as a family, because I know how anxious she gets.

And there are new things popping up every so often. New procedures to be followed. New things that occur to her that could be risky in some way. News stories about outbreaks make me feel dread, not because I’m afraid of us getting sick, but because I’m afraid of HER getting afraid of us getting sick. And they worst part about actually getting a cold these days sick isn’t feeling sick. It’s knowing (without her actually having to say it) that she thinks it should have been prevented somehow in the first place, and that it’s because of my own damn failure to wash effectively or something that got me sick.

In a nutshell, living with Jo I've learned to become much more vigilant about germs and illnesses. I can see what she sees, I understand her reasons and her thought processes, but she definitely feels the intense anxiety on a much deeper level than I do. I see her points, I see those germs, but I don't have the fear. 


But this is just the way life is in this household, and we deal with it. Our physical health is better for it, but it's at the expense of Jo's mental health quality of life.

---

Thank you, dear husband. Even though life with me can be tough, and sometimes I ask you if you washed your feet well today or if you cleaned the top of that soup can before opening it, I'm glad you think I'm worth it. :)

Jo, 1. Hygiene Hypothesis, 0. Dar, 2 sick kiddos. :(

So by now you're probably familiar with the back-and-forth  Blog War!!11  I'm having with my friend Darlena. (Well, it was supposed to be a war, but we love each other too much for it to be. Not to mention I'm too right for it to be. Snort.)

Anyway, so I started off the whole she-bang, she-bang.

I set out to say that the Hygiene Hypothesis is a bunch of bunk. P. Much.

Dar countered by expressing that it's all about moderation--she's not too worried if her kids touch notoriously germy things like shopping cart handles, etc. She explained that to her, mental health is as important as physical health, and she just can't go on worrying about germs constantly. But, it was of note that her NON-Bubble-Kids did get sick their first day of preschool.

I followed up with a bunch of scientific hurble burble. People in another blog I write threw me to the dogs, saying that my OCD is not smarter than real scientists, saying that basically I'm not entitled to a dissenting opinion because OCD clouds my mind or some shit. Which I thought was a little harsh. But see, even certain scientists don't agree with the Hygiene Hypothesis, which I used as my "rebuttal."

After that, I added a blog about the emotional response that Dar's post had inspired.

And that's p. much where it ended, until today.

Until today when a new convert was born. And all the world Jo rejoiced!!

Well. I don't rejoice that her babies are slinging this virus back and forth like a snot-covered Frisbee. But you know.

So now I think Dar gets that it's a load of hooey. And as for the rest of you?

To Live, or Not to Live. That Is OCD.

So my darling friend Darlena, as planned, made her rebuttal to my Hygiene Hypothesis post. The post below this one is the entry I settled on as my quasi-rebuttal-to-a-rebuttal, but in reality, this right here is the first post that her rebuttal inspired.

In her blog post, she makes excellent points. Mostly because it seems she basically agreed with me. Heh. I found myself thinking, "Well, she's not wrong about that...or that...or even that...Hey! I said that too!"

And then I bristled a little bit. I took a moment's offense at the statement "I simply cannot avoid all the germs she can. I have a life."

I took offense because, obviously, it seemed to be telling me I have no life or that I need to get one.  And I know Dar would never hurt my feelings on purpose, but at first, I must confess, I was stung.

But then I thought a little more. And you know what? I TOTALLY DON'T HAVE A LIFE. Or, more accurately, my poor babies don't. (Well, OK, one of my babies, Naomi, is too young, at five months old, to have a life or to know about cold germs and bum-bum germs--although whenever she sneezes, we jokingly say, "Noey, Christsakes, cover your sneeze!!")

But yes, that's the whole point, of this disorder, of this blog: I don't have a life. You're right, Dar.

The whole problem with my OCD is that, indeed, my life and my husband's life and my children's life are drastically impacted. I am consumed with panic and fears about germs, and that means that either (1) I just don't GO anywhere; or (2) I freak out internally whenever we DO go somewhere, which is no fun. No fun at all, I assure you. I don't have a life, because getting out there to live it scares me.

I am a stay-at-home mom. Aside from things like taking time out for the kids' naps or allowing time for my all-important surfing of the web, my job is to raise and grow and inspire and stimulate my children by taking them places in this world. Instead, we stay home. When I say I'm a stay-at-home mom, I got-damn mean it.

So do I have a life? No, not really. Occasionally, when I wake up on the right side of OCD, I do take my kids out--to the park, on an errand to Babies R Us, to the neighbor's house, even, like whoa, into the backyard. I know, right??

Sidenote: What's sad about that is that it's not a joke--it takes extreme effort and motivation to just plain take my kids into our own yard. It's less about germs than it is about motivation--I think that's a whole separate issue. Often, I tell Maya, "You can go play outside in our [fully-fenced] yard by yourself. Mama can't go outside right now. But you can, and I will watch you through the window." Needless to say, this isn't a very ideal suggestion for her, since she wants to play, and play with ME. But one of the endless issues that I deal with is either a type of depression, agoraphobia...

...or I'm just plain and simply a fat fuck what won't get off the couch,

or else I'm just a lazy ass,

but all I know is I suck for a plethora of reasons. A cornucopia, if you will.

Anyway. So those were my two first reactions to Dar's "rebuttal" to my Hygiene Hypothesis post: Agreement, yet at the same time, a little pain.

But she is right. She has a life, and can't spend all that time worrying, like I do. Or, more accurately, she just doesn't spend all that time worrying, because she doesn't have a mental disorder. See, she's lacking one crucial thing:

She's not

.

I joke. I joke so I don't cry. Tears of a clown, and all that shit.

No. Not that clown.

No. Not that clown either. Jeez, you guys.

(Can I interrupt this regularly scheduled program to tell you all that I HAVE MET TIM CURRY IN PERSON? OK then. Back to bum-bum germs.)

----

So, while Dar may basically agree with me on a lot of points, the thing is, it doesn't occur to her in the same way it does to me. She might go to a friend's house and not notice if the friend washed her hands before starting dinner. She might let her kids play at the McPlaguePlace and keep popping over for more bites of fries before heading back into the tunnels, without using hand sanitizer three times in a row first. She might go for a walk and let her kids pet the neighbor dog, then go home and just keep playing without needing to wash first. She might, sin of all sins, wear shoes in the house. ;)

Because while she knows good hygiene, and agrees that handwashing is very important, things don't occur to her like they do to me. I can't even say things ever even do "occur" to me, since the thoughts never left in the first place.

A couple of her quotes stood out to me:

"Yes, washing your hands is good. Yes, it's clean and I advocate it strongly for everyone. But to the point of compulsion? If I see a compulsive tendency popping up in my kid, taking care of that (provided they don't have a mental block that predisposes them to compulsions in general) trumps hand washing."

The only "good" thing I can say about my OCD is that I don't compulsively wash (or make my kids wash) in the way people imagine most OCDers do. I don't wash 12 times in a row. Once is fine. I don't jump up off the couch with the sudden and random compulsion to wash. I wash at what I think are very appropriate times. So I'm not one of those people who washes compulsively, except...I don't know what else you'd call it. I guess you could say that I DO have a compulsion to wash. Just not until my hands bleed, or in the middle of the night, etc. So thank goodness for that, anyway.

Then Dar said:

"They really haven't lived in a bubble, and that's okay. I'd rather them be sick sometimes if it allows them to live a little."

That's also where she and I differ. I'd prefer ANY option over my kids getting sick. This is the obsession, the constant worry, the all-consuming fear I can't get over. And  another of her quotes really got to me deeply:

"Mental health is as important as physical health."

She hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. That's where I struggle to find balance. Because I believe strongly that there are bajillions of horrible germs on the toys at the Children's Museum, I can't let my daughter play there without having an extreme panic attack. And I'm not giving my daughter a chance to play, explore, learn. So I don't know what to do--how to balance it all? Go to the Museum anyway, at the expense of MY mental health, just to make my kids happy? Or keep them home, where I feel safe and clean, at the expense of the richness of their lives?

Obviously, the answer is, I need to find a way to NOT feel terrified and horrified by taking my kids to the Museum. Win-win. Kids play, I feel fine. But it's the "I feel fine" part I'm working on, and trying to find a fix for.

Because months later, many visits to the doctor later, and all MANNER of medicinal nonsense later, I'm still where I started. Living in a bubble and keeping my kids chained in there too.

The Hygiene Hypothesis, P. Much Take Three

So Darlena over at ParenTwin wrote up her rebuttal to my post. My original post, "P. Much," was here, and Dar wrote up a fine fine piece entitled The Hygiene Hypothesis, Take Two (Take Two--OMG--twins--pun intended??).

And now that I've spent two days finger-babbling and belaboring unrelated points, alas I realized that none of what I was writing was the rebuttal-of-a-rebuttal like I had intended. For two reasons, I think: (1) that Darlena didn't really disagree, per se, with the gist of my post and my points on hygiene and why the hypothesis stinks--rather, she just explained that there are certain risks that she's willing to take, whereas I am not; and (2) that it turned into more of an introspection on my part, because of some of Dar's statements.

Crapsicle!! So much for the big war we had planned!

Anyway, I will say this, so I can at least post something to do with the Hygiene Hypothesis: What I hate most about it (and about people's uninformed spouting off about it) is that people take it too far. People wildly misinterpret it. And while I think that even at its true core, the Hygiene Hypothesis is lamesauce and ridicballs, all it basically says is that early exposure to allergens and infectious agents causes fewer incidences of asthma, eczema, and allergies in general. It doesn't say that by catching tons and tons of colds and flu as kids makes you less likely to be sick from them later. Getting a lot of colds in preschool doesn't mean you're not going to be allergic to peanuts, doesn't mean you won't get eczema, and doesn't mean you will get fewer colds later, goddammit.

Not to mention, there are so, so many other issues to take into consideration. Some people think that the increase in childhood asthma could be related to swimming pools, for baby Jesus' sake. Then you have to consider possible over-exposure to certain allergens, and the way children are fed, and where they're from, and endless other contributing factors:

"There are many other hypotheses which aim to explain the increase in allergies in developed nations, many of which are also related to the other. A few other major areas of focus in the literature include infant feeding, over-exposure to certain allergens and exposure to certain pollutants. Infant feeding covers a range of topics which include whether babies are breast fed or not and for how long, when they are introduced to solid foods and the type of these foods, whether they are given cow's milk and even the types of processing that the milk undergoes."

So, you see, there are dozens of hypotheses that aim to figure out why certain conditions like asthma are on the rise. But for some reason, people latched on to Mr. Strachan's Hygiene Hypothesis with an iron grip and refuse to let go, claiming that illness is somehow healthy, people who also refuse to use their noodles and inject a little common sense here and there.

Not to mention, there are studies that come to a completely different conclusion and argue against the Hygiene Hypothesis:

"The 'hygiene hypothesis' postulates that reduced exposure of children to microorganisms and parasites increases the probability that they will develop immunologic disorders including allergic diseases.  It has been used to explain the increased incidence of such diseases and the increase in asthma in developed countries compared to underdeveloped countries.  There is some experimental evidence supporting this hypothesis.  However, the epidemiological data are not uniformly consistent with this hypothesis.  A recent Australian study (Ponsonby et al, International Journal of Epidemiology, 2008, 37, 559–569) showed a reduction in the prevalence of asthma and hay fever without evidence for a decrease in hygiene. Asthma prevalence has also been dropping in other developed countries.  In addition, asthma is more prevalent in poor inner city neighborhoods in the US and these areas are unlikely to be more hygienic than the more affluent areas.  In addition, improved hygiene is not the only environmental difference between developed and underdeveloped more rural countries.  For example, in more developed countries people tend to live in tight buildings which are fabricated from and contain artificial materials which emit chemicals that could possibly facilitate the development of allergies. [Further,] It is in fact well established that poor sanitation practices contribute to high infant and child mortality rates in underdeveloped countries."

Another study also found evidence arguing against the Hygiene Hypothesis:

"The study by Dutch investigators at the Erasmus University found although children in day care got more colds and other infections, they were just as likely as other children to go on to develop asthma or another allergy by the age of eight. The children who went to nursery and who had older siblings had more than quadruple the risk of frequent chest infections and double the risk of wheezing in early life, with no obvious pay off in terms of later protection from allergy."

So which is it? Which hypothesis to believe? Why did those hypotheses never catch on? Why are people so quick to say, "It's OK, she's puking up last night's fish & chips now, but she's boosting her immune system with every heave!" Well, while you're trying to make up your mind, just consider this quick and simple question: Dirty hands or clean hands? Which is healthier? I remind you, we learned this in kindergarten. So mankind, quit telling me that my child will be healthier after poking the dog's butthole and then eating a bowl of popcorn.

(Or you may just want to pick up a box or two of dog bum-bum covers.)

Next up: The introspective blog that Dar's post also inspired.

P. Much.

I swore I'd never discuss this with you, and that if you tried to blather on to me about it, I would kick you in the slats. But a good friend's blog post got me thinking, and when you get me thinking, you get me ranting, and I cannot be stopped. So here we are: Discussing The Hygiene Hypothesis.

The link I am responding to from is my buddy Darlena's blog, ParenTwin, which you can find here. She's planning a "rebuttal" of sorts, so I will be sure to link you to that later. :)

---

Recently, Darlena was posting about the dreaded First Time at the Cesspool Preschool. Her poor kiddos got sick p. much immediately.

Now, this is not uncommon. Everyone talks about how as soon as your kids start daycare, they're going to be sick p. much constantly. If they start preschool and have never been in daycare, they're also going to be sick p. much constantly. What is their reasoning? "Because they've never been exposed to these germs before."

In Darlena's case, though, her kids have been exposed to tons of stuff, stuff any typical kid has been exposed to: germs that would make my skin crawl and my OCD spiral out of control, because I am not the typical mom and my kids aren't allowed to be the typical kids. Darlena is an extremely active mother, and her kids get a lot of exposure to the world at large--she runs a billion errands a day and takes her kids along, she takes them for walks, they're at the park p. much all the time, and they have had more playdates in their little finger than my kids have had in their entire life.*

*Pretend this metaphor made sense. Move along.

So, her kids have been exposed, like most kids. Maybe not to daycare, but to shopping cart handles, public restrooms, diaper "incidents," potty chair "incidents," playdates with other little kids, and surely poop on a hot tin slide or two. Her kids do not live in a bubble. If anyone's do, MINE do.

And yet, her kids got sick immediately after starting school, as is typical. Why? Surely they've been exposed to plenty of germs and colds before. Why isn't the Hygiene Hypothesis working here?

Because it's p. much bunk.

Oh, and please recall:

"A theory has been extensively tested and is generally accepted, while a hypothesis is a speculative guess that has yet to be tested."

Sorry, hypothesis!!

Listen, I totally agree that there are certain things kids need to be exposed to. Dirt, grass, plants, well, all of nature. Dust. Animals, along with their animal dander. Things like this. But there are certain things that never, ever benefit anyone. The stomach flu. E. coli. Salmonella. Staph. MRSA.

Even things like the good old common cold or the flu. (1) How, exactly, do these bolster one's immune system; and (2) why, according to so many people, must small children be exposed to such yucky things?

Let's examine (1). Say your toddler catches a cold. She is snotty and coughy and snivelly and miserable for a week. She can't sleep because her nose is all stuffy, and if she can't sleep, neither do you. Everyone is miserable when the kid is sick. Or, even worse, let's say your tiny baby catches a cold. She doesn't even know what's going on and has no tools to deal with being sick. She can't be told, "Here, blow your nose" or "This soup will make you feel better" or even, "Honey, I know how bad you feel, but you'll get well soon." She can't even take any medicine for it! All your baby knows is that she can't breathe.

So, has this cold helped either child? Colds mutate constantly. You never become immune to catching them. Because the next one is going to be one you have never encountered before.

And if catching colds helps us avoid catching colds (a ridiculous statement in itself), then why don't we ever "grow out of it"? If we attend daycare as kids and are constantly coming down with something, and the go through school still getting sick here and there, why as adults do we still catch colds? Why as old people aren't we completely immune?

Again, because colds mutate. And catching one does not mean you will become magically stronger and not likely catch the next one. We will catch colds ALL OUR LIVES. For many people, 2-3 a year, or eve more, for their entire existence, p. much as a rule.

So. On to part (2). If we are forever going to be catching colds, why is it so important that kids are exposed so young? Everyone always spouts off about how great and wonderful it is that kids get sick. "They're strengthening their immune system! Hoorahhh!!" But if we're gonna catch colds, why not do you utmost to prevent them from happening to your little tiny ones? Why not try to wait until they are older and stronger, and mentally/physically better able to deal with them and understand that they're sick?

If you had your choice, would you want your 2-week-old baby to catch a cold? No way, right?

Well, why, then? Why wouldn't you want her to? Wouldn't it help her? Give her a nice headstart on the good old immune system? No. It would be fucking misery, and possibly dangerous to boot. Babies can choke on phlegm in the night or become so stuffed up that they die. Silently. It happens. Your non-OCD mind might not worry about a baby dying from a cold, but mine does, because I have OCD but also because it happens. A good friend of mine almost lost her daughter right there at the doctor's office, after taking her in for a regular ol' case of the sniffles. Her two-year-old suddenly turned blue and had to be taken in an ECNALUBMA to the next-door hospital and be resuscitated. Anecdata, yes, but true, and fucking scary.

So why is it so great for a 6-month-old to catch a cold? Or even a two-year-old? And why am I the crazy one for disinfecting my daughter's restaurant table, or keeping her away from sick family, or not wanting to take her to the McPlaguePlace McPlayPlace?

My older daughter, Maya, has only ever had like two colds in her life. One was when she was 7 weeks old, when my sister-in-law thoughtlessly brought her two very, very sick kids to a family get-together. We all caught that cold, and not only were we miserable, I was terrified for my infant. I basically kept vigil over her and never slept until she was better. So how did this cold benefit her? She could still catch another at any point.

But she only did one other time (funny enough, thanks to the same oh-so thoughtful sister-in-law). Just those couple of times, because we take great pains to wash and sanitize our hands, teach her not to touch her eyes, nose, or mouth when out of the house, and to maintain a clean home or clean environment, wherever we go.

According to the Hygiene Hypothesis, my kid should be sick all the time, because we put forth such effort to avoid contact with germs. My Purell Kid should catch every virus we run into because of an immune system that was never allowed to develop. But she's never sick.

Whereas certain friends of mine (theee very friends mentioned in my blog post, "The Acid Test") are sick All. The. Time. All the time. ALL THE TIME.

And they never wash their hands. Seriously, like, never ever. Not when coming home. Not before eating. Not before cooking. Not after shaking hands. Not after playing at the Children's Museum of Every Virus Known to Man. Not after pooping. Not after touching raw meat or turtles or the floor of a Wal*Mart. Never.

If you took my family, and their family, we'd p. much disprove the Hygiene Hypothesis right then and there. They are exposed to so many germs you'd think they'd have developed chainmail fucking ARMOR against colds and flu. You'd think germs would cower at the sight of them. You'd think our friends would see germs and be like, "Dude, we've HAD you before. We've rolled in you. We've eaten you. We've rubbed you in our eyes and noses. WE PWN YOU."

And yet it is my family who never gets sick. Why? Because we wash our damn dirty hands.

Now, back to Darlena. This is not to compare her to my "Acid Test" friends at all. Not remotely, because no one else could possibly be that bad. :)

But because Darlena doesn't suffer from OCD, her kids have been exposed to a typical, normal amount of germs. They've been healthy, they've been sick, and so it goes. Yet at their first exposure to preschool, they caught the sniffles.

My turn is coming up soon. My daughter enters preschool in mere days. Will she catch a cold right away?

MAYBE.

But am I glad that she has not had a dozen colds in her almost-four years?

YES.

Because they would have been of no help. We would have had a sick, miserable child on our hands, for no reason, because the next cold to come along would be a new, mutated one she had never been exposed to anyway, and she could catch it too, if we weren't careful with hygiene.

If we can agree that kids who have been exposed to a lot of germs, AND kids who have not been exposed to a lot of germs, BOTH get sick pretty frequently when beginning daycare or school (which seems to be the consensus, since whenever daycare or preschool is mentioned, the response is always, "Ohhh, prepare for constant runny noses and coughs"), then I ask you, what was the point of all the colds your kid had when they were much younger?

Being exposed to certain things does absolutely no good whatsoever. These are things like the stomach flu or all the nasties that live on commoly touched surfaces, like staph or shigella. Who ever heard of becoming immune to E. Coli or being unlikely to catch it next time you're exposed to it? Or having had food poisoning so many times that now you are untouchable? Not to mention, frequent handwashing and all-around good hygiene has drastically reduced illnesses and has extended our very lifespans.

One source says of this theoretical idea that too much cleanliness has led to an increase in asthma or allergies:

"It is in fact well established that poor sanitation practices contribute to high infant and child mortality rates in underdeveloped countries...[Thus,] A decrease in hand-washing increases the incidence of infectious diseases which may more than outweigh the benefit of a possible reduction in immune disorders."

Being exposed to certain things can be important. These things are dirt, dust, and animals. Early exposure can and does help prevent many allergies.

But being exposed to colds and flu does not "help build your immune system." Because you will never be immune to colds and flu.

If your kids are gonna get sick, it's better to have it happen when they are older, stronger, and more able to cope with being sick. And, of course, it's best to just try to avoid getting sick altogether.

It's just common sense, people. We learned it in kindergarten. Wash your hands.

---

And now for one last treat, I bring you this gem. A month or so ago, I was visiting the public restroom *shudder* at the local UW Bookstore . The stalls were all full, so I was waiting my turn. And as I waited, a boy, aged approximately nine years old, crawled, Army-style, out from under the handicapped-stall's door. Crawled. Belly-down. Hands palm-down. Face-down. Slithered. On the restroom floor. The public restroom floor. His mother said nothing of it, opened the stall door, and exited. Naturally, without washing their hands.

Many of you probably recoil in horror at imagining this, even though you aren't OCD Like Me. Why the horror? Isn't that child just bolstering his immune system? And if you say "no, that's just fucking gross," why do you think it's such a wonderful, immune-system-strengthening thing when kids catch colds or other nasties off other public surfaces, which in all likelihood are even filthier than that restroom floor? Why?

My motto: Avoid What You Can, Deal With What You Can't. And I prefer that we all avoid as many illnesses as possible. But that's just me.

P. much.