I am not a germ warrior. The three-second-rule? I'm down with that. Germ-free environment? Impossible with kids, and probably not good for them, either. But today my own kid's hands skeeved me out, and that led to an idea.

Baby A and I met The Wonderful Husband for lunch at a restaurant. I'd gathered her from preschool—well, "book camp," where she's "studying" Sandra Boynton's Oh My Oh My Oh Dinosaurs!—and put her in front of one of her favorite lunches when I realized I had not washed her hands.

What tipped me off? The brownish grub. The dried paint. The clay under her fingernails. Those didn't bother me as much as the stuff I couldn't see. But have you ever tried to take a hungry child away from a table laden with yummy things, especially to wash her hands? It's ugly.

Then it hit me: Wouldn't it be nice if, on the condiment bar with the napkins and straws and tiny packets of Tabasco (love those, by the way), there were packets of sanitizing wipes? You know, the kind they give you after a meal of crab legs or lobster or BBQ?

They're cheap, and they'd make us skeeving parents Oh.So.Happy.

If I were one of those moms, I'd have a few in my bag, along with Band-aids and Kleenex. But I'm not. And I don't.