Watch Dog - The Germaphobe

I recently volunteered at Dagger Jr.'s school to be a Watch D.O.G.S. For those not familiar with the program, dads volunteer to go into their children's school, work in the various classrooms, patrol hallways, and play with the kids. The idea is to have a constant positive male role model for those children who don't have one in the out-of-school lives.

Now, I must say I had a good time overall. Man, has school changed since I was a kid! Now, instead of neat rows of single desks and pure order in the classroom, you have kids grouped into pods of 4 working together. Also, there is constant activity with kids getting down and retrieving things or working with the teacher. I got to 'help' the 4th class do a science experiment. Plus I got to play with Dagger Jr. during recess.

One of the sacred duties of the Watch D.O.G.S. is to give 'high fives' to the kids as they walk by, or during lunch. In fact, during the lunch hours my job was to open bottle lids, open containers, give ketchup and mustard, and (of course) pass out Sporks!

As the day went on, and especially during lunch, I found my germaphobe meter going out of control. Soon I was diving for the nearest Germ-X bottle. At one point I even took a quick bath in the stuff - OK maybe not; but I can't tell you how many times I thought about all the sick germs on the kids hands.

I guess it didn't help that the kids were trying to tenderize my hand by winding up as hard as they could. My hand was ready to cook by the time school was over, and I slinked home to crash.