If I wasn’t guilty of it myself now and again, I’d probably crack down harder.  The thing I’m not cracking down on enough is one of the most common of petty household crimes: fake hand washing.

You run the water, you pass your fingers under it, but you don’t really lather up and properly clean your hands.

I usually wait for my sons, 11 year old Gabriel, and 15 year old Rafael, to commit the offense before I call them on it.  Bleeding heart liberal that I am, I don’t believe in “prior restraint.”

Rafael, say, will go into the bathroom, and, when he’s finished taking care of his business, I’ll hear him turn on the water.  Not three seconds later, the water goes off.  The minute he steps out of the bathroom….

“Did you wash your hands?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you use soap?”

“Oh.”

He’ll stop, turn around, and go back into the bathroom and wash his hands again, this time with soap.

Why he even bothers with the “oh” at this point is beyond me.  As if, after nearly fifteen years of my harping, he “forgot” that he’s supposed to use soap.  “Oh,” as in, “Oh, sorry, right, I just forgot.”  And, of course, in the time it’s taken us to go through the “did you wash/yeah/soap/oh” ritual, he could’ve just as easily washed his hands properly the first time.

Gabriel, my younger, more emotional son, will sometimes get indignant:

“I did wash with soap.”

“There’s no way.”

“I did!”

“Wash them again anyway.”

That’s when we go eyeball to eyeball.

“Fine!  Whatever, I’ll do it again.”

And he’ll huff back into the bathroom to “rewash” his “clean” hands.   Sometimes before dinner, I’ll ask him whether he’s washed his hands – and he always says yes – and I always ask to look at his palms.  When it comes to the dinner table, it isn’t about whether he was just in the bathroom or not.  It’s about a whole day of an 11 year old horsing around, touching other filthy 11 year olds, picking his nose, tumbling onto the playground asphalt, etc.

And usually, his palms are filthy.

Once I call him on it, it can go one of two ways:

He’ll get up without saying a word and go wash his hands, or, he’ll say he washed them, but that “some of the dirt won’t come off.”

And I’ll either say something like, “What do you mean the dirt won’t come off – what, were you laying tar after school?” or “Okay.  Fine.  Let’s go to the sink.  If I can get them cleaner than they are now, you lose dessert.”  That usually sends him running to the bathroom.

I’m exhausted by the amount of energy I waste trying to get my kids to wash their hands.  But I’m just too much of a softie to take out the belt or even bust out my booming, loud, scary voice.

So instead, it’s death by nagging.

But, as I say, there’s a reason I don’t get too worked up about it all: the hypocrisy.

Here are my own wobbly standards regarding hand washing: after I pee, sometimes I wash my hands with soap, sometimes I don’t.  There.  I said it.  And sadly, one of the biggest motivators for me to wash with soap isn’t the desire to improve my hygiene.  No, it’s the thought that someone else standing outside the bathroom might figure out that running the water for three seconds means I was faking it.

But I’m aware of this character flaw, and I’m trying not to pass it on.

So if one of my sons is sitting outside the bathroom, I will make a point of modeling good behavior by washing my hands slowly and meticulously with soap.  If I’m in a public restroom where others might see me – a restaurant or airport bathroom, for example – I scrub so vigorously that bits of foam go flying into the air.

And, just to put your mind at ease, when going #2, there’s no question of hand washing.  I do have some hygienic integrity.  On the other hand, if you meet Rafael or Gabriel, you might want to think twice about shaking their hands until I finish bashing the virtues of soap into their lazy little brains.

You see, children are not born innocent, and then corrupted by society.  They are born savage and must be beaten into civility.

And for me, civility comes in the form of a curved white bar.