I have finally recovered from the stomach ache I thought might kill me. After talking to several friends and the mothers of some of my children’s friends I discovered that it is some sort of weird “bug” going around. So just a heads up if you or your child have a horrible stabbing abdominal pain that even hurts to the touch. It probably isn’t an appendix ready to burst.

We joked that perhaps we should look for a meteor laying around town somewhere.

This morning I was reading news online and came across this report that says hand washing in the U.S. is declining. Why? Why, people?

I have admitted before that I am something of a germophobe, but in a healthy way. No, really. I don’t have vats of Purell in my house, or antibacterial soap, nor to I keep my children in a plastic bubble, though I’d really like to for many reasons other than their likelihood to come across germs.

But I refuse to bring them to those McDonald’s or ChuckECheese indoor playgrounds ever since I saw a news expose showing how they were never cleaned and contaminated with e-coli and all sorts of flesh eating bacteria. Excuse me, I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.

“Fifteen to 20 seconds of friction and soap and water will remove so many germs from your hands and help with your wellbeing. That is a marvelous intervention that will work all over the world,” Judy Daly, director of the Microbiology Laboratories at the Primary Children’s Medical Center in told reporters.

Something as simple as hand washing could prevent the transfer of so many germs.

The article went on to say that only 77% of people washed their hands after using a public restroom, compared to 92% of people who SAID that they did. And men, they were by far the worst offenders. There was a huge discrepancy between the rates of hand washing between men and women. “[J]ust 66 percent of men [were] seen washing their hands in public bathrooms, compared with 88 percent of the women.”

Even 88% seems startling to me.

Your mission this week, should you chose to accept it, is to drill hand washing into your children. Make it a habit in the home so that it will become a habit out of the home as well. And you know what they say about children copying what you do and not what you say. Model the behavior for them.

I will thank you from the bottom of my germ phobic little heart. But even better, you can thank yourself when you are NOT cleaning up vomit from your child’s bedroom floor in the middle of the night. Yes, they will still get sick, but at least you can feel as though you were doing something proactive.