What Are We Becoming?

I keep seeing commercials for paper hand towels for the home. Not the paper towels you use in the kitchen, but towels for the bathroom, for drying your hands. Just like in public bathrooms. And I thought the automatic soap dispenser was lazy.

Apparently, our cloth hand towels are too germy for us to dry our hands on. So we're saving ourselves by using disposable paper towels. You could argue that this also saves the environment by using less water and a renewable resource. However, you could also argue that you're killing tons of trees and adding to the landfills.

My argument? How can we become a nation of germaphobes and still eat the way we do? Seriously, we've all heard about the obesity epidemic, haven't we? We eat fast food and gigantic portions and then sit and watch tv, but we're worried that our soap dispensers and hand towels have too many germs?

Besides, look at how many of us grew up without all this anti-bacterial crap. We're still alive, aren't we? Did we die of some weird flu virus?

I'm of the belief that a little bacteria is good for you. Your immune system can't learn to fight things it's never exposed to. So expose it a little. Go ahead and touch that doorknob! Use that cloth towel! I dare you!

In the mean time, I will continue using my manual-dispenser soap pump and my cloth hand towels. I'll even continue to touch the handle on public restroom doors on my way out. Take that, germaphobes!

I think the big macs and cokes will kill you before the germs on your hand towel. (Assuming you do wash the thing periodically, or at least replace it with a clean one.)