Hand Sanitizer

So my twelve year old daughter comes walking by me and I smell something very fragrant. I thought it was perfume. “She seems a little young to be wearing that?” I thought. So I asked her what fragrance she was wearing. She smiled and said it was hand sanitizer. After a moment of embarrassment I thought about it. Hand sanitizer is everywhere. They have it at grocery stores so you can wipe down your cart. They have it at gas stations so you can get rid of the smell of gas. They have it in doctor’s offices in case you come up against a germ they didn’t catch when they wiped down the furniture with sanitary wipes earlier. Even in my daughter’s back to school list, it said to bring hand sanitizer. What is going on? We have become a nation of germ crazy people. Everywhere you go they have hand sanitizer. We never had it when I was growing up. Somehow I survived and if you’re reading this, you did too. Then my doctor told me those products kill most germs but don’t usually affect viruses. Isn’t that the big argument in favor of hand sanitizer? I have also read that lack of exposure to germs makes people less tolerant of them and therefore, more susceptible to illness. I’m not against being clean. Wash your hands. Great idea. But the hand sanitizer is just too out of control. It makes you wonder how we lived without it. I guess it’s still better than my daughter wearing perfume already.