This isn’t a typical Seeing Signs topic, but I love good smelling soap. The brand of hand soap I buy has amazing scents — but only after you’ve rubbed the soap onto your hands for several seconds. When someone washes their hands at my house and tells me they like the scent of the hand soap, I know they were in there scrubbing away to the tune of Happy Birthday, Baby Shark or Row, Row, Row Your Boat, or just checking themselves in the mirror. Hearing, “That smells good!” is a sign that my guest is clean. When there isn’t a compliment, well, I judge. Wasn’t the pandemic a reminder of the importance of clean hands? Handwashing was actually one of the biggest and most controversial medical breakthroughs. Back in the mid 1800s, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis figured out that when doctors would go from autopsies on infected corpses to delivering a baby, the mother and baby got infected too. Not everyone believed him at first, but he proved that handwashing reduced the spread of germs, which saved lives. Consider this Seeing Signs post a public health message and advice to slow down and smell the soap.

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