Germaphobia gone mainstream

Okay, not to brag or anything, but I've been germaphobic since before it was fashionable... like since the 20th century. I can't even walk into a bathroom to get something out of the cabinet without washing my hands. And wash long enough to sing the alphabet song in my head. And the harsher the soap, the better, because I don't want ANYTHING alive on my skin--and that even goes for the epidermis!

(Which reminds me of my zoology class at BYU, where we had to dissect something each and every week. My lab partner and I always seemed to finish early, but we had to stick around to take the end-of-class quiz, so we would always go to the vending machines and get a pop and those nasty "Grandma's Cookies" that taste NOTHING like anything MY grandmother ever made, but I digress. Anyway, we'd go back into the dissection room and eat, always grossing the other students out. But here was my secret to being able to stomach eating a trans-fat laden sugar bomb cookie within 200 yards of a formaldehyde-preserved cat: soap in the wash area that smelled so antiseptic that you could completely disinfect Brittany Spear's toilet... and Brittany Spears herself... with a single wipe. Granted my hands looked like they belonged to a 93-year-old Bedouin that spent his entire life in the Sahara, but by golly, those hands were CLEAN!) Okay, that was a long aside, but bear with me.

So needless to say, I've been a sucker for anti-bacterial products whenever a new one comes out. Antibacterial hand soap: check; antibacterial lotion: check; antibacterial pens: check check (I bought a box); antibacterial kite string: check; antibacterial yogurt: check (although it just tasted like milk). Given all that experience, I think I'm qualified to say that a recent product I saw at Target is a little over-the-top.

Check out this picture I took at the store. Okay, now get a little closer to the monitor... a little closer... a liiiiiitttllle closer... okay, there. Now look at the upper right-hand corner. You see where it says "Microban?" Well Microban isn't a tiny can of spray deodorant, it's antibacterial plastic. Yes, the protractor is made out of ANTIBACTERIAL PLASTIC! While I appreciate porta-potties being made out of Microban, I can't imagine a protractor getting too dirty and certainly not enough to spread disease. Hold on, let me check the Urban Geometry curriculum for the high school here in town... okay, here it is:

Unit 8-Angles; Chapter 2-Protractor exercises.
Measure the following angles:
1. What is the angle where the toilet lid rests on the toilet?
2. What is the minimum angle required of a stream of urine to make it into the urinal?
3. What is the preferred angle one should hold his arm at when shooting up heroin with a used needle?

Well, I stand corrected.