I gotta say I've never been a fan of "antibacterial" anything. I believe the human body is an absolute miracle, brilliantly designed to be self-healing. And to be honest, I think a handful of dirt in the mouth now and again is...
good for a kid. I think it builds that fantastic immune system we were designed with. As my chiropractor Dr. Mike is fond of saying, "God put kids near the ground so they could eat dirt". I'm totally down with that.
My brother and I grew up in a single parent household and mama was not only smart, she was ahead of her time. For example, she limited our refined sugar intake -- while all my friends were chowing down on Cap'n Crunch, Fruity Pebbles and Cookie Crisp for breakfast, (damn you delicious Cookie Jarvis!) I was forced to choose between Maypo and Puffed Wheat. Our home was heated using a combination of firewood and a home-spun solar energy collector (she added a huge south-facing sun room to our house, equipped with black 55-gallon drums of water). I admit, life was a little unusual at our house sometimes, but I'm not complaining; I think my mom was brilliant.
She also understood the body's powerful healing ability. We were regulars at the chiropractor and she would only allow us to take antibiotics in the most dire of circumstances. She was no doctor, but even she knew that the strongest of the bacteria can and would evolve and the more "anti-bacterial" products we produced, the more the bacteria would adapt and be resistant to any medicine we threw at it.
This history of mine might explain why I have mixed feelings about the product sample I just received in the mail today. Smead has come out with a line of file folders and expanding wallets that are impregnated with a substance that's toxic to bacteria, yet safe for humans to handle, and won't leach out onto your documents. Now don't get me wrong... I love Smead. They're a solid company and a longtime innovator in the industry. I love their Workspace Files, I love their File Sorters, and I love their new SuperTab File products. I'm just not sold on the new antimicrobial line of filing products. At first blush, you might think it sounds like a good idea, but for me, it raises some questions that, to be frank, I don't have the answers to.
Is this just one more hurdle in bacteria's Survival of the Fittest game? Will they simply adapt and overcome, emerging even stronger than before? Is yet another antibacterial product in the marketplace part of the solution or is it adding to the problem? And from a marketing standpoint, has Smead jumped the shark with this product innovation? In the words of Seth Godin, are they solving a problem that doesn't exist?
Maybe this is a sign of the times, and perhaps we really are so far gone, our immune systems so delicate that we actually need this kind of product. But dang, I hope not because if that's the case, the common cold will do us all in for sure.
So for me, the jury is still out -- way out -- on the antimicrobial product line. But Smead, if you're listening... I'm still a fan, and I'll continue to use and recommend your other products. And hey, when you guys come out with a manila file folder that won't slice me open, you let me know!
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