The Stupidest Google

Well, I was disappointed with my google results today.

Or disappointed in myself, it’s hard to tell.

I have a bottle of hand sanitizer I keep in my car. Although it’s now about 1/32nd of a bottle, because I left it upside down in a cupholder and it was 95 degrees out and it opened itself and proceeded to fill an entire cupholder with discount hand sanitizer that smells like a tequila still, and I would up scooping it out by the handful and chucking it out the open door.

Which isn’t the point. The point is that it’s been in there a few months and I had a vague recollection today of how you’re not supposed to leave it in the car as I smeared it gleefully on my hands and sniffed hard enough to pretend like I can actually still drink alcohol.

Also, I’m very tired. I spent three straight days in triple-digit heat moving out of a 6-bedroom house, then was kept up all night by dogs because things were new and strange.

So the way brains work, mine wondered if you weren’t supposed to leave it in the car due to diminishing potency. Nearly simultaneously, I recalled the viral horror stories that went around in the days of forwarded urban legend emails, the kind your moms printed out and shoved in your face to convince you to check under your car before driving in a car wash or some shit. There was always one about a mom who noticed their kid acting strange, rushed said child to the ER, and their life was narrowly saved as they were quickly treated for alcohol poisoning.

How did they get alcohol poisoning? Well, by licking their hands after putting hand sanitizer on them, of course.

These broad elements combined, I immediately googled “How long do I have to leave hand sanitizer in my car before I can drink it?”

Dear reader, google returned approximately no useful results

I learned that it does lose a little potency though it won’t make your car explode.

So I went on to google, simply, drink hand sanitizer.

I am disappointed to report that yes, people do just plain drink hand sanitizer. And they die and go blind.

Real downer to what I thought was a perfectly hilarious google search.

So the moral of the story is, uh, I guess, your kids can lick their hands if they just put on hand sanitizer and they won’t die?

There we go. At least we learned one good thing.