Filthiest baby alive
My wife and I recently met friends and their progeny at the Discover Mills mall near our home. Because we live in a suburban Mecca there are actually two malls near us, Discover Mills and Mall of Georgia. I usually take my daughter to Mall of Georgia because it's kids' area has a playhouse complete with slide, comfy benches and a plethora of children's books filed away in mahogany bookshelves. The Discover Mills play area has a few giant concrete bugs to play on and the occasional hypodermic needle.
Just teasing. It was probably just used for knitting.
Anyway, Discover Mills has a Lego store and an As Seen on TV store. Now do you see why we went there? Regardless, it's not the kids' play area I want to talk about; it's the food court surrounding it. Specifically I want to talk about the wonderful parents we saw and compare them to the bad parents we are.
First let me alibi and say I never eat fast food. Never. I gave it up years ago after I found it disgustingly necessary to limit my drive-through meals to only one in a twenty-four hour period. Shouting into the clown once a day is gross enough. Any more than that and a person becomes some weird Isle of Dr. Moreau creature that's half human and half polyunsaturated blubber. That being said, I promptly went up to the fry gal at Burger King and ordered a Double Cheese combo of my own volition. I ate it.
All.
And a Hershey chocolate pie. It had been years and I thought what the hell? What's the worst that can happen? I get cancer? Ha! I laugh in the face of cancer. Ha ha! Ha hahaha cough cough wheeze. Moving on.
I not only ate most of the fries myself, I decided to share some of them along with the burger with my one-year-old daughter. Did my wife get any? No. She was too busy scarfing down Sbarro's pizza. We like to pretend pizza, regardless of its origin, isn't fast food. Same goes for fried chicken.
Quit making fun. You're not the boss of us.
Our daughter was happily sitting in a grungy highchair to which we hadn't even cared to give a precursory wipedown with a moist towelette. Furthermore, while we do own a Baby Easy Clean Shopper, it looks so good up in Meryl's closet that we can't bare to bring it down and use it. When my kid licks the edge of the communal food court table, I just avert my eyes and bury my face in two all-beef patties.
Across from us is this similarly aged couple with their two boys, both of whom are running around the lead-based play area in their bare feet. No big deal. The kids are probably up on their tetnus shots. I'm just telling you so you get an idea of the local color.
Anyway, while my family is all devouring whatever badness is in front of us, this neighboring husband and wife team spend a good five minutes scrubbing everything around them with baby wipes. He cleans the top of the table. She wipes the edges of the table. He cleans the seat of the highchair. She washes the arms of the highchair. They even clean their own chairs, including the backs I didn't see what they all ate, but the youngest member of the family got to snack on YoBaby brand yoghurt.
How do you spell that anyway? I don't feel like looking it up. Is it yoghurt? Yogurt? Yoh Gert! Idunno.
My question is this: If you're such a germphobe, why are you even taking your kids to the food court at a local mall to eat? And then more importantly, when you get out the wipes and hand sanitizer are you really wiping said germs away? Or are you just wiping them around?
That's almost as bad as guys who after using the restroom hold the door handle with a paper towel and then drop the paper towel on the floor. As if the bathroom door handle is the only thing in whatever venue you happen to find yourself that has germs on it. And while I'm on the topic, guys who meticulously wash their hands after taking a leak in a public bathroom are all just giving the rest of us a bad name. Unless you routinely urinate on your hands, this is superfluous washing.
Do you wash your hands after shaking hands with someone else? After picking up an item someone hands you? After you scratch your head do you wash your hand? Why does touching the fifth appendage merit extra hygienic aftermath? I've never understood the logic in that. Frankly, I don't think there is any.
Our table received no scrubdown, and my daughter probably had schmutz on her moosh from the breakfast she ate earlier in the morning. She's still alive. But like I said, we're bad parents that way. Do not replicate.
Just teasing. It was probably just used for knitting.
Anyway, Discover Mills has a Lego store and an As Seen on TV store. Now do you see why we went there? Regardless, it's not the kids' play area I want to talk about; it's the food court surrounding it. Specifically I want to talk about the wonderful parents we saw and compare them to the bad parents we are.
First let me alibi and say I never eat fast food. Never. I gave it up years ago after I found it disgustingly necessary to limit my drive-through meals to only one in a twenty-four hour period. Shouting into the clown once a day is gross enough. Any more than that and a person becomes some weird Isle of Dr. Moreau creature that's half human and half polyunsaturated blubber. That being said, I promptly went up to the fry gal at Burger King and ordered a Double Cheese combo of my own volition. I ate it.
All.
And a Hershey chocolate pie. It had been years and I thought what the hell? What's the worst that can happen? I get cancer? Ha! I laugh in the face of cancer. Ha ha! Ha hahaha cough cough wheeze. Moving on.
I not only ate most of the fries myself, I decided to share some of them along with the burger with my one-year-old daughter. Did my wife get any? No. She was too busy scarfing down Sbarro's pizza. We like to pretend pizza, regardless of its origin, isn't fast food. Same goes for fried chicken.
Quit making fun. You're not the boss of us.
Our daughter was happily sitting in a grungy highchair to which we hadn't even cared to give a precursory wipedown with a moist towelette. Furthermore, while we do own a Baby Easy Clean Shopper, it looks so good up in Meryl's closet that we can't bare to bring it down and use it. When my kid licks the edge of the communal food court table, I just avert my eyes and bury my face in two all-beef patties.
Across from us is this similarly aged couple with their two boys, both of whom are running around the lead-based play area in their bare feet. No big deal. The kids are probably up on their tetnus shots. I'm just telling you so you get an idea of the local color.
Anyway, while my family is all devouring whatever badness is in front of us, this neighboring husband and wife team spend a good five minutes scrubbing everything around them with baby wipes. He cleans the top of the table. She wipes the edges of the table. He cleans the seat of the highchair. She washes the arms of the highchair. They even clean their own chairs, including the backs I didn't see what they all ate, but the youngest member of the family got to snack on YoBaby brand yoghurt.
How do you spell that anyway? I don't feel like looking it up. Is it yoghurt? Yogurt? Yoh Gert! Idunno.
My question is this: If you're such a germphobe, why are you even taking your kids to the food court at a local mall to eat? And then more importantly, when you get out the wipes and hand sanitizer are you really wiping said germs away? Or are you just wiping them around?
That's almost as bad as guys who after using the restroom hold the door handle with a paper towel and then drop the paper towel on the floor. As if the bathroom door handle is the only thing in whatever venue you happen to find yourself that has germs on it. And while I'm on the topic, guys who meticulously wash their hands after taking a leak in a public bathroom are all just giving the rest of us a bad name. Unless you routinely urinate on your hands, this is superfluous washing.
Do you wash your hands after shaking hands with someone else? After picking up an item someone hands you? After you scratch your head do you wash your hand? Why does touching the fifth appendage merit extra hygienic aftermath? I've never understood the logic in that. Frankly, I don't think there is any.
Our table received no scrubdown, and my daughter probably had schmutz on her moosh from the breakfast she ate earlier in the morning. She's still alive. But like I said, we're bad parents that way. Do not replicate.
posted by kevin black at
9:54 PM
6 Comments:
I thought I read somewhere that the germophobe type parents are actually doing more harm than good for their kids because they're not being exposed to germs and building up their immunities. Or maybe I dreamt that up.
On the other hand, I'll readily admit, I wash my hands after every visit to the bathroom, and I've tried to convince the people at my workplace to install an alarm that'll go off if someone exits the bathroom without doing so. I think that'd be fun, but nobody's going for it.
Yeah, all those over-santized kids will probably get massive infections and diseases down the road when they get smacked upside the immune system because it hasn't had to fight off any nasty food court germs.
At least, that's what I tell myself.
And my daughter likes to lick the handle of the grocery cart. Which I've heard is worse than a bathroom door handle.
I don't believe in washing my hands ever. Unless I've been at the park because that place is nasty. Otherwise, I'm sure my hands will get clean as part of my shower which I take ever few...occasionally.
Grocery carts are dirty. But they're not as dirty as the kiddy carts. We have some where I work and those things are rolling bacterial breeding grounds.
I've come to the realization it isn't the cart itself, but the organisms that ride in the cart. Kids are just naturally dirty and hard on everything. But it doesn't help that the plastic has a collection pool under the cart itself where no one can clean without a high pressure hose.
I'm a bad parent too... but my at least my kid is healthy. All the germophobe parents out there are doing their kids a major injustice; they're wiping away the GOOD bacteria that helps our bodies fight off the bad bacteria, and weakening their immune systems. And the more GOOD bacteria we wipe away, the stronger more uber the bad bacteria gets.
So here's a toast to you Kev! For being a dirty dad! ;)
First I'll say that Kevin's blog just cracked me up. But honestly the whole "wiping away the bad bacteria will end up harming your kids" are just telling themselves a nice little story to help them sleep better at night. Granted you can't save your kids from everything but more health harming illnesss and diseases are spread from lack of washing than anything else. Ever heard of e. coli and staph? Yeah, a good chunk of that is found in human excretions which are commonly found in the vicinity of children because they're still getting the hang of the whole personal cleanliness thing. It's important not to go overboard because that is indeed how hardier bacteria evolves, but it's just plain laziness bordering on stupidity not to at least take a swipe at it. I recall history when mothers who'd recently given birth kept dying and it was finally discovered that doing autopsies on decaying (non refrigerated) bodies and then not bothering to wash your hands or change your apron, or even switch scalpels and going on to deliver a baby and cut the umbilical cord caused contamination and disease spreading that shockingly killed mothers and their infants. It's easy to joke, but if you don't use some common sense (which according to my husband doesn't exsist anyway) How hard would it be to take a swipe at getting "some" of the layers of nastiness off instead of just piling some more on for the next unsuspecting person to expose their child to? If you're not making an effort then you're the problem.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home