Give Us Clean Hands

Tonight Danny and I were guests at the (very nice) home of a friend's uncle. During dinner I had to use the restroom, and naturally I washed my hands afterwards: germs can be a real problem here in China. Although I have a strong immune system, I don't have antibodies against many of these foreign germs, so good hygene is essential (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, you know).

While washing, it occured to me that the effects of the bar soap I was using were somewhat suspect. The soap had been handled by others who have touched god-knows-what-else, and given the dubious quality of goods made in China for domestic consumption, I had good reason to doubt the efficacy of the soap at all.

Then I started thinking about the water. My mom raised me to always wash my hands with soap and hot water. Hot water, that was the way to go—according to my mother, if the water ain't hot, there's hardly any good in washing. Granted, I'm not sure that hot water actually kills any germs, since my skin can't tolerate boiling water, which would be needed to dispose of most pathogens. And even if I could withstand such temperatures, I doubt I could tolerate them sufficiently long to do any real good. Nonetheless, I found myself at the mercy of my socialization, and wondered how much good it was really doing to wash my hands with cold water. "Now instead of germs on my hands, I just have wet germs," I told myself.

I won't even get into the issue of drying my hands on the common-use towel, but you can just imagine the bacteria, fungi, and other germies proliferating on a moist piece of cloth in a semi-dark room. Needless to say, I was very glad for the hand sanitizer I keep in my satchel for moments like these. Kills 99.99% of the germs that cause disease, plus the aloe and vitamin E "leave hands feeling soft & refeshed"!