With a few fresh baby wipes resting on top of the wipe warmer, I pin my daughter Cross, who needs a diaper change, down with my left elbow, because although I have washed my hands in the thorough style of a Johns Hopkins Hospital neurosurgeon, as my sweet wife has instructed, I then touched my iPhone, the device my sweet wife considers to be the dirtiest item in our home. (I often wonder if she thinks I rub my phone around the rim of a dumpster every night for 20 minutes before I come in for dinner.) While trying not to press onto my daughter's torso, I reach for the hand sanitizer. I think of rewashing my hands but don't want to step away while she's on the changing table — she could take a leap of faith deep into her fuzzy pink throw rug and land both of us in the doghouse.
Cross squirms and kicks, knocking the wipes off the warmer as I punch a perfect glob of sanitizer into the center of my palm. I am sanitized. I try to pull out another wipe, but it's stuck, so I tug. Sixty wipes explode out of the box onto the changing table and the floor.
