Immunity Through Germs- Hollywood Style

I'd never watched the show Raising Hope before this week, and chances are good I won't again. But this week I happened to read an episode description, and it included something about germophobia, so I tuned in.

I missed the first five minutes, but the show apparently involves 4 generations of a family, with an infant daughter, Hope. Not sure how, but our family ends up with a black light dealy that shows germs. And they're EVERYWHERE! Poor Hope! They freak out, and clean all heck out of their cluttered home. Result: no more germs! Yay! Then grandma walks into the room, and ACK, she's a germ machine. What to do?? They move her out to the greenhouse to live. During their cleaning, however, they discovered a cache of home movies. They watch and see grandma (back when she was still just mom) and grandpa are totally gross: sneezing all over, licking serving spoons, dropping silverware on the floor and picking it back up and using it (something I saw my dad do just last week, by the way).

Anyway, conclusion: hey wait a minute, we're all really healthy, and it's probably because of all the germs we were exposed to along the way. Let's let grandma come back into the house, too.

My mom is always telling me this very thing. It's probably even true. My nieces are germy as heck and after getting sick a lot as toddlers, I can't remember the last time they were sick. I was raised by my germy mom, and I'm awfully healthy, even now as I wash less and less. I mentioned watching the show to my mom and she said, I taped it and I was going to save it for you. I should have known.