Levi, our first son, has a disability that requires us to make sure he doesn't get sick. What can be the slightest cold to most people can be (and has been) a big deal if Levi picks it up. So during the winter seasons, or what we like to call Sick Season, we don't go out in public very much. When we do leave the safety of our home we use hand sanitizer in excess. It's crazy how fast we can go through a small bottle of purell, so that's why we carry several small bottles. We also have a couple of larger bottles and don't even get me started on sanitary wipes.
A couple of weeks ago, when the leafs in North GA had just started changing into their pretty fall colors, we decided to take a trip to an apple orchid in the GA mountains of Ellijay. We planned it on a weekday afternoon to miss the crowd. To say that there was barely anybody there is a complete understatement. We saw a total of one other family that afternoon.
When we arrived and were getting out of the car I was doing my usual activities which is generally putting on the backpack full of medical supplies, diapers and spare cloths. The spare cloths are a "just in case" for the children but we rarely go anywhere without this backpack. But before I put the backpack on and started helping Tiffany with the other stuff, I reached deep into one of the backpack pockets to grab my pocket sized bottle of hand sanitizer. This is generally my personal bottle that I use every time I touch something in public. The rest of the family generally uses the pump bottle of sanitizer on the side of the backpack I'm carrying.
So we're walking around and enjoying the sites and we take a quick hay ride back to the petting zoo because we know the boys are going to love that. As soon as we get off the hay ride I reach into my pocket for my trusty little bottle and I put a liberal sized glob of sanitizer in my hand and start rubbing it in and notice the consistence is a little different that what I'm use to. I just think to myself, "it must be a new formula". I then shrug it off to make our way to the petting zoo.
After paying an extensive amount of time playing with all of the animals in the petting zoo we were able to rinse our hands at a sink just outside of the gate. Then we all applied our sanitizer and once again I noticed the consistency of the goo that I was putting in my hands just wasn't right. I also started noticing that everything I touched was extremely slippery. Once again I shrugged it off and continued having fun.
As the fun is winding down and we're about to leave we spent a little time taking pictures of the boys sitting on old John Deer tractors and I went to apply more hand sanitizer. As I applied the sanitizer the bottle almost slipped out of my hands because my hands were just that slippery. That's when I finally took the time to really look at this bottle of sanitizer and that's when I realized... One thing I haven't mentioned yet is, in this magical backpack full of cloths, diapers and medical supplies are the supplies that we carry for Logan's special needs. And one of those supplies is a bottle of personal lubricant that is the exact same sized as hand sanitizer and somehow that is what I grabbed at the beginning of our trip. When I got out of the car and started preparing for the afternoon I thought I put a bottle of hand sanitizer in my pocket but instead I put a bottle of Astroglide in there. So the whole afternoon I had been lubricating my hands instead of sanitizing them. It's an easy mistake to make but it's one I'll never make again.
Needless to say, when I told Tiffany and the boys they all laughed at me. Logan laughed so hard he almost fell off his tractor. Hopefully these are memorize my children will never forget.
