It’s amazing when you think how far we’ve come as a civilization, hygienically speaking. For most of the past 1000 years, people only bathed if they absolutely needed it. "Needing it" was usually defined as "the filth is actually caking off, might as well start a new layer". Grunge wasn’t just a musical movement in those days.

Then one day, someone discovered that diseases weren’t caused by evil spirits or bad humours in the body, but by microscopic creatures called "bacteria". Suddenly, doctors went out on a limb and told their patients that it might be helpful if they took a bath once a week. Some were lauded for their scientific genius, but most were run out on a rail by angry mobs who were bored with tarring and feathering the usual scalawags.

Before long, though, people in America adopted this strange custom of bathing once a week. Saturday night became "Bath night" for the typical American family, which only made sense since Sunday was "church day" and heaven knows you didn’t want to offend Mrs. Peabody with your rank odor, even if she usually smelled like sour prunes herself.

Years passes, and people began to notice that with improved hygiene, people started living longer. People took more baths per week, with some even (gasp) bathing every day! Soap manufacturers, no longer content with milling out the usual lye and animal renderings, began spicing up their soaps. They added perfumes, deodorants, and what surely must be the pinnacle of soap-based technology, the rope.

Now, Americans are living longer than at any time in history. The projected life span is somewhere around 78 years, if I’m not mistaken. As a whole, we’re healthy, rosy-cheeked, and fine examples of our species. There’s one little problem, though. We might have gotten overboard with this cleanliness thing.

In a recent report, the AMA (American Medical Association, for the acronym-impaired) opined that Americans were concerned about cleanliness almost to the point of obsession. It pointed out that we now spend so much on antibacterial products that we are wiping out bacteria that are actually beneficial to us. Additionally, the AMA says that some of the "bad" bacteria that are supposed to be knocked out by our chemicals may actually mutate into super-bacteria, resistant to anti-bacterial agents and apparently able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.

I suspected that the nation might be lapsing into mass OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder) a few years back when hand sanitizers cane into vogue. You know the stuff I’m talking about, the clear liquid (Purell was/is the most popular) that you’d place directly on your hands and rub in, all the better to kill the nasty germs. All fine and good, except that I knew some people who would spread this glop on their hands 8-10 times a day (no lie!). I shudder to think how much Purell Howard Hughes would have gone through, had he been alive to use this stuff.

Then soaps began advertising that they were "anti-bacterial". The public ate it up, despite the fact that a good washing with any soap will destroy any harmful bacteria, unless they happen to be some REALLY tough muthas! Then dishwashing detergents began marketing anti-bacterial formulas. I think it was all a ploy to sell more soap, but that’s just me.

The breaking point for me, though, came the other week, when I was walking through the grocery store, and came across what looked like a bottle of laundry detergent in the produce section. "How odd" I thought, and I picked it up to see what the heck laundry detergent was doing next to the lettuce.

That’s when the horrible truth hit me. The product was detergent, all right, but it was for fruits and vegetables. Called Fit, it promises to get your produce cleaner than washing in water alone.

Now my question is, what was wrong with water in the first place? Granted, I’m not crazy about the possibility of ingesting possible pesticides and/or waxes and/or whatever other strange coatings may be on my apples. That notwithstanding, I really think I can live with that without worrying about tasting Fit residue. Water cleans, people.

What really chaps me, though, is how they are pushing this junk on TV. The ads start off looking and sounding like a commercial for TGI Fridays, with a fresh-faced young actress posing as a Fridays employee. She’s not just any Plain-Jane waitress, though, no sir! She’s also a nutritionist-in-training who happens to be SO stoked about Fit. She explains and demonstrates how it supposedly gets veggies cleaner than with water alone.

That’s why I’m calling for a boycott of anti-bacterial products. Mothers and fathers of America, don’t be afraid to let your kids get dirty. Throw out your anti-bacterial concoctions! Toss aside your special germ-fighting whoozits and whatnots!! DON’T BUY FIT, NO MATTER WHAT THAT BIMBO ON THE COMMERCIAL SAYS!!!! Get dirty for once. Get the sniffles! Enjoy a little downtime. Believe me, your immune system will thank you for it later.

Clint McGuire would like to assure his mom that his anti-anti-bacterial crusade doesn’t mean he’s stopped washing behind his ears. Feel free to check at aeolian66@hotmail.com.

Ó 2000, Clint McGuire